What women want: a voice

It’s been said in some circles that you can tell the gender of a composer simply by listening to the music. But can you really?

“You can’t,” says Pamela Madsen, who founded the Women in New Music Festival, taking place this weekend at Cal State Fullerton, in part to address just such issues.

“Some women do celebrate the idea of themselves as women,” she adds. “But some women don’t. There are just as many diverse voices among women as among men.”

That question will be further explored during a Saturday afternoon panel, part of the university’s fourth annual incarnation of the festival. This year, more than 50 female composers -- and 15 men -- will be represented.

Famed avant-gardist Pauline Oliveros and Joan Tower, the first woman to win a prestigious Grawemeyer Award, will be there. The hot new-music group eighth blackbird (“So good it’s dangerous,” writes the Boston Globe) and a new chamber ensemble, Diametric Ensemble, will perform.

There will be premieres, free lectures, discussions and -- to help keep all of it affordable -- ticket prices that top out at only $20 for each concert.

Fullerton professor-composer Madsen said she created the festival to celebrate women’s voices.

“Usually, it’s the case where one woman’s work is played at a concert -- or maybe not. Here, the balance is shifted. But it’s not called Women Composers. It’s called Women in New Music. So there are men included, on an equal footing.

“We decided it’s a good thing not to make it exclusively women, but to celebrate women within the canon, to show that women are up in there. We’re bringing women’s and men’s voices so that they’re heard on an equal plane.”

The event began in 2002 as a listening installation set up in one room on campus.

“People could walk in and out,” Madsen said. “It was very low-budget.”

But it wasn’t a bad idea.

“The response was very surprising,” she said. “Everybody took it up.”

That original idea survives in today’s more glamorous version, called the Women’s Electro-Acoustic Listening Room. That’s where you can listen to works intended to be heard through loudspeakers, rather than performed live, and also hear the music of more than 50 women.

How does Madsen get so much music?

“The call for work goes out to the broadest network of composers -- through the American Composers Forum, the American Music Forum, the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music and other organizations.

“That propagates its own network. It goes to China, Australia, Russia. I’ll be surprised with what comes in. Gifts come wrapped in all sorts of strange packaging.

“Basically, this year, I got three days’ worth of music and had to whittle that down to four hours.”

The selections range from musique concrete to high-end computer music. But there is live music too, with concerts Friday and Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Next year, Madsen would like to expand it to a three-day event plus a concert in the fall and one in the spring.

“Eventually, this is trying to celebrate different kinds of issues -- and it will continue in the future. We’ll be looking for voices that maybe are marginalized, that would want to be heard. What I find when I hear these works are very personal, different, exciting new voices, which is what keeps it all going.”

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Women in New Music Festival

Where: Performing Arts Center, Cal State Fullerton, 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton

When: Concerts: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday. Other events: noon and 4:30 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday.

Price: Concerts, $15 to $20. Afternoon events are free.

Info: (714) 278-3371; www.fullerton.edu/arts/events