Beth Anderson is certainly getting around.

On April 20, her Kentucky Swale for string orchestra was performed at the 2008 Beijing International Congress of Women in Music, held on the China Conservatory of Music Campus in Beijing. The International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) and the CCM were the producers. More information is available at http://www.iawm.org/congress2008.htm.

Beth attended the festivities, and here's her report from Beijing.

"I went to Beijing to attend the International Association of Women in Music conference. They had chosen to perform my Kentucky Swale in the Concert Hall of the Forbidden City. It was too attractive an offer to miss."

"The China Conservatory String Orchestra performed the work and they did such a lovely job of it. There were about 50 players and all of them were terrific."

"I got to do quite a bit of sight-seeing every day because I was awake so early and the conference sessions did not start until about 11 AM. So after the 7 AM breakfast at the conservatory, it was off to the temples and parks, the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City and The Great Wall. Big fun."

"The first evening symphonic concert was in the new National Performing Arts Center. It serves the same function as our Lincoln Center but all the theatres are under one roof. It is enormous. It has an amazing design and gives the general impression of just having landed from another planet."

"You should have seen me going up the Great Wall of China. I took off at such a clip that I left (my husband) Rusty in the dust! I wanted to get up high so we could take our photo together for our Christmas card. We got 2 pictures taken but both are a bit in shadow."

"That wall is not just 3800 steps to a flat top. You climb some easy steps and then you get to some uneven rock tiles at a slant and then more and worse steps and then eventually you are climbing almost straight up. If there weren't hand rails, you would need ropes. Also the Chinese use the Great Wall as a place to sell things/shop. So while you are huffing and puffing and worrying that your knees or heart won't make it, people are trying to sell you hats and metal engravings and pictures of the wall made out of bird feathers and postcards and toys that light up and everything else you can imagine. And people are everywhere taking pictures of each other and their babies. People asked us to have our pictures taken with them and we did. They call it 'knee-how'='hello'."

"We went to the Summer Palace and it was really pretty...a big park with beautiful buildings and paintings, lots of steps to climb, saw several life birds...azure winged magpie and another magpie with a fancy long tail and orange beak...and regular magpies."

"We went to the zoo and saw the pandas and the wonderful collection of birds (cranes, ducks, geese, swans, pelicans)." "I went to a music shop that sells instruments for the Peking Opera and in the evening we went to hear Peking Opera."

'The conference was a success. I met a lot of wonderful women composers and heard good pieces and good performers. The sightseeing was interesting and, best of all, my performance was lovely."

Feminae In Musica, with violinist Aleksandra Maslovaric and pianist Tania Fleischer includes Belgian Tango and Tales #1 & #3.

Modern Voices In Piano Music recorded by Nancy Boston includes September Swale.

And, of course...

Quilt Music on Albany Records (TROY709): This is an all-Beth Anderson CD including the large piano piece, Quilt Music, along with three song cycles - Cat Songs, Dreaming Fields, and Harlem Songs.

New World Records has issued Swales & Angels - another all-Beth Anderson CD of her chamber music, released with the support of The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Thomas Buckner and others.

More about other CDs featuring Beth's music at http://www.beand.com/.

For more information about composer Beth Anderson, please visit http://www.beand.com or you can contact Jeffrey James Arts Consulting at 516-586-3433 or jamesarts@worldnet.att.net.