Penny Corris Symphony No. 1

Penny Corris’ Symphony No. 1 in A will be performed by the Milwaukee Philharmonic, Matthew Makeever conducting, on July 6, 2019 at 8:00 p.m. at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts, 19805 West Capitol Drive, Brookfield, Wisconsin.  The concert will last approximately one hour and will include Mozart’s Symphony No. 29. The concert is free to the public.

Penny Corris is a classically trained, composer with a degree in music history, theory and composition from the University of Wisconsin Madison and graduate study at Brandeis University and the University of Wisconsin in Madison. As an undergraduate, Penny studied French horn with Alec Wilder. An accomplished piano performer, she also studied piano at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.  In 1968 she co-published a book on Mozart Piano Cadenzas with Paul and Dr. Eva Badura Skoda.  She was awarded a grant for post-graduate studies by the National Endowment of the Arts.

As a serious classical composer, and following the performance of her songbook as a successful fundraiser for the Fisher House in Milwaukee, Penny felt the challenge of composing a full length symphony for a large scale orchestra.  The result is her First Symphony, a four movement symphony written for 36 instruments.  Penny’s goal is to be able to have her symphony performed free to the public.  First, she believes that more people should have the opportunity to see and hear live classical music, without regard to their ability to afford concert ticket prices. Second, a free concert will benefit the Milwaukee Philharmonic, which was founded in 2017, by incentivizing attendance, thereby introducing concertgoers to the Philharmonic. Third, and more personally, as someone who is acutely aware of the relative lack of female classical composers, Penny would like to raise public awareness and be a role model for women of any age who aspire to compose classical music.