Erica Sipes will perform her program Let Them Fly! - Stories of Women Composers & Their Music
at the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art
Saturday, March 8 at 3:00 PM
On the program will be music by Marianna Martines, Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Germaine Tailleferre, Melanie Bonis, Lili Boulanger, Anna von Schaden, Dora Pejačević, and Madeleine Dring.
Sipes, along with pianist Sandra Mogensen started a project Piano Music She Wrote at the beginning of 2020, due to the difficulty finding scores to piano music written by women. They have a YouTube channel where they post recordings they have made of their favorites.
Erica Ann Sipes received her bachelor's and master's degrees in piano performance from the Eastman School of Music. Sipes debuted with the Chamber Soloists of San Francisco at age 10. She has worked as a staff accompanist at the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival and has been to Prague and to St. Petersburg as the pianist for various choirs and has also performed with the Chelsea Chamber Players in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Ms. Sipes currently lives in Roanoke, Virginia. Much of her time is spent accompanying young musicians, playing chamber music with friends and colleagues in the community, teaching piano, and working on the Piano Music She Wrote project that she and pianist Sandra Mogensen started in the Spring of 2020. She is also a staff pianist and the practice/performance coach for the entire music department at Radford University. Ms. Sipes regularly plays piano for Opera Roanoke, the Roanoke Symphony, and the Roanoke Symphony Chorus. In the summer of 2012 she officially launched her own business as a practice coach, offering coachings, workshops, planning sessions, and practice boot-camps for anyone that could use some help with practicing. She is also a co-founder and pianist of the Alma Ensemble, a trio dedicated to championing women in music, education, and creating connection through music.