The Gena Branscombe Project

09/23/2026

Joining the faculty at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio. Laura Clapp, The Gena Branscombe Project’s 2025 Conductor Scholarship winner, is now Assistant Professor of Music and director of the Wilmington Chorale.

Laura’s conducting background includes directing Out of the Blue, an undergraduate choir and community volunteer singers that performed at local prisons. She led music workshops for women incarcerated at the Washtenaw County jail.

A winner of the 2025 Presser Graduate Music Award, she researched prison choirs in the US and UK. Laura presented at the 2026 Midwest ACDA conference on a panel of prison choir practitioners. As a recipient of a 2026 Arts Initiative Grant, Laura conducted a performance of “Considering Matthew Shepard” with University of Michigan students and Ann Arbor community members.

Laura worked with Voices of Hope, a Minnesota-based prison choir organization, as a recipient of the Yale Glee Club Service Through Music Fellowship. While in Minnesota, Laura also co-directed StreetSong, a choir for people who have experienced homelessness.

Laura received her Master of Music degree in choral conducting from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. from Yale University.

Congratulations, Laura!

09/04/2026

After a few months of trying to set up a coffee date with The Gena Branscombe Project’s 2026 Conductor scholarship winner, today was the day. Valentina Paolucci spent the summer in Quebec and Romania attending conducting workshops. And, the Project spent the summer planning the Gena concert in her hometown! Our schedules did not sync.

This morning we met for coffee on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, sat chatting about music, performing, teachers and mentors and much more. Valentina is a warm, engaging person, one who is dedicated to her conducting career.

Here’s Valentina with her winner’s mug! And, she finally received her scholarship check! Valentina has quite the conducting season ahead of her…..updates as they happen. Congratulations, Valentina.

09/03/2026

What a traveling summer Valentina Paolucci has had and a very rewarding summer it has been! Early summer found her at the Domaine Forget Académie internationale de musique et de danse in Saint-Irénée, Quebec. Just day ago she returned from Romania where she participated in the George Enescu International Festival and Competition. At the Festival her conducting mentors Cristian Măcelaru and Marin Alsop offered inspiring advice and encouragement . For the final concert Valentina shared the stage with “amazing young musicians from all across Romania.”

Valentina is the 2026 Gena Branscombe Project’s Conductor Scholarship winner. We look forward to watching your continued success, Valentina!



Paolucci

09/02/2026

One Eye Publications has recently published “The Songs of Gena Branscombe – Volume 2” for both high and low voice. Volume 3 soon to follow!

Six of Gena’s personal favorite songs including “Three Mystic Ships,” “Radiant as the Morning,” “Across the Blue Aegean Sea,” “By St. Lawrence Water,” “Autumn Wind,” and “There’s a Woman Like a Dewdrop.”

Immerse yourself in these beautiful and melodic songs of nature, water and love. Singers and their collaborative pianist will find rehearsing and performing these songs rewarding with audiences wondering why they have never heard of Gena Branscombe!

08/26/2026

In 2021 The Gena Branscombe Project awarded an Art Song commission to composer Jane Kozhevnikova. Her art song was premiered at the first Gena Branscombe Project concert in Boston in November 2022.

In the ensuing years Jane worked on her Ph.D. in composition at the University of Florida graduating this Spring. She is now Dr. Kozhevnikova!

For the 2026-2027 school year, Jane is joining the faculty at the University of Florida as Visiting Assistant Professor of Composition.

Congratulations, Jane!

08/14/2026

📰 “A musical force of nature.”

We couldn’t ask for a better description of Gena Branscombe.

Thank you to The Wellington Times and Sharon Harrison for this wonderful feature celebrating Gena’s extraordinary life, her deep roots in Prince Edward County, and the homecoming we’ve dreamed about for years.

Born in Picton in 1881, Gena went out into the world as a composer, conductor, pianist, and champion of women in music. This weekend, her music comes home.

🎼 FROM PICTON TO THE WORLD
📍 Picton United Church
🗓 Saturday, August 15 | 4:00 PM

🚶 Gena Branscombe’s Picton: Heritage Walk
🕚 11:00 AM | Led by Liz Driver, PEC Heritage Conservancy

🍷 VIP Post-Concert Reception
📍 Black Prince Winery

🎟️ Tickets & details at the link in bio.

WomenInMusic TheGenaBranscombeProject

08/13/2026

📰 “The County’s Composer.”

What a joy to see Gena Branscombe back in the pages of The Picton Gazette - more than a century after the paper first began chronicling the life and career of one of Picton’s own.

We’re so grateful to The Gazette for this wonderful feature on Gena, the unlikely story of her rediscovery, and why bringing her music home to Picton means so much to us.

Swipe through to read the feature →

And then come hear the story continue on August 15, when Gena’s music returns home.

🎼 From Picton to the World
📍 Picton United Church
🗓 Saturday, August 15 | 4:00 PM

🚶 Gena Branscombe’s Picton: Heritage Walk
🕚 11:00 AM | Led by Liz Driver, PEC Heritage Conservancy

🍷 VIP Post-Concert Reception
📍 Black Prince Winery

🎟️ Tickets & details at the link in bio.

TheGenaBranscombeProject

08/08/2026

Cameron Smith, winner of The Gena Branscombe Project’s 2021 composer scholarship, orchestrated the soundtrack to the “The Last House,” a recently released Netflix movie!

You can listen to her work on Spotify!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5SX7hFq2WLqUd3mQZe7DSe

Congratulations, Cameron!

08/05/2026

The Picton Gazette has written a wonderful article about the upcoming "From Picton to the World: Bringing Home the Music of Gena Branscombe" concert! Great article!

https://pictongazette.ca/post/the-countys-composer

Born and raised in the County, composer, pianist and choral conductor Gena Branscombe launched into an internationally renowned classical music career in the early 20th century, a time when few female composers could earn recognition, never mind acclaim. While her career was based in the United Stat...

08/03/2026

Four of The Gena Branscombe Project’s conductor scholarship winners have been having busy summers.
This year’s conductor winner, Valentina Paolucci, has spent several weeks this summer at the Domaine Forget Académie internationale de musique et de danse in Saint-Irénée, Quebec being inspired with beautiful music making and learning from world renowned conductors Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Kensho Watanabe. The culmination of her weeks of lessons and coachings was the honor of conducting the Orchestre Métropolitain in the final concert. Congratulations, Valentina.

Hannah Nacheman, winner in 2023, will be Music Director at Co-Lab Works at Avaloch Farm in Boscawen, New Hampshire where she will lead rehearsals of Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes for chorus and piano four hands as well as other chamber pieces. Set in the idyllic New Hampshire countryside, the purpose of the singers and pianists days is to eat, sleep, practice, rehearse and then perform at the end of the week! Sounds quite wonderful.

Valery Saul, winner in 2022, made her debut with the Nashville Symphony in a program honoring Dolly Parton
Micah Gleason, winner in 2021, recently conducted the Utah Symphony Orchestra in Park City, Utah for a program of Mozart’s overture to Don Giovanni. Prokofiev’s Sinfonietta and Louise Farrenc’s elegant and dramatic Symphony No. 3.

Congratulations to all of our conductor winners! You are carrying on Gena Branscombe’s legacy of inspired music making. Thank you!











# Co-LabWorksatAvaloch Farm
# DomaineForgetAcadémieinternationaledemusiqueetdedanse