Jim Dan Hill Library: Applied Music: Musical Works and Performance: Find Underrepresented and Emergent Composers

This page features resources designed to aid identification of historic and contemporary musicians of different heritages and identities. In general:

resources featured tend to depict larger listings of people and works (rather than profiling a specific individual).
resources promoting particular collections tend to be associated with lending libraries or collectives with lending policies (rather than specific publishing companies or public relations firms, both of which may be additional avenues of interest for you to research).

Music for a Range of Instruments and Repertoire

The Big List of Women Composers
Sortable by era, " an ever-expanding list featuring more than 5,000 women composers (and counting)."
Boulanger Initiative Database
Women Composers and Gender-Marginalized Composers Repertoire Database.
Canadian Music Composers (Canadian Music Centre)
Options to sort by name, region, birthday, and more; as well as to search by instrument
Diversify the Stand
"Programming Resources to diversify your stand"
Institute for Composer Diversity
Based in the School of Music at the State University of New York at Fredonia, the Institute for Composer Diversity: "is dedicated to the celebration, education, and advocacy of music created by composers from historically excluded groups through database resources and programming analysis. "
Leo Smit Foundation
You can view the profiles of a list of composers in English from the main page.
Per the website: "In the Second World War, many composers were silenced because of their Jewish descent or their resistance. Their music was forbidden. The Leo Smit Stichting carries out research, tells composers' stories, makes sheet music available and performs forgotten music. Together with musicians, programmers, researchers and listeners we give composers their rightful place in music history."
Music Theory Examples by Women
A performance and theory instruction resource. Features scores, theory concepts, and audio recordings of works that can be sought through various filters, including but not limited to meter & rhythm; scales & tonalities; form; and instrumentation.
Women Composers Collection [via Hathi Trust]
"A collection of mostly 19th- and early 20th-century musical scores by women composers held at the University of Michigan Music Library."

Music for Specific Instruments and Ensembles

The Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music
A large circulating collection of orchestral performance sets that include catalogs of works by Canadian Composers, Composers of African Descent, Women Composers, Latin American Works, and more
Chamber Music America's Composers Equity Project
A 2022 PDF from Chamber Music America featuring an alphabetized list of composer's names.
String/Chamber Repertoire by BIPOC Composers
A 2020 PDF from USC's Thornton School of Music
The Wind Repertory Project
The Wind Repertory Project presents itself as a "database of wind literature, expanded by contributions of band directors/conductors, students, and wind band enthusiasts worldwide. " If you scroll to "composer categories" you will see a variety of composer backgrounds and identities featured.

Music for Voice

Art Song Alliance
Includes the mission to: "Promote and Uplift the contributions made by African-Americans to art song, be they composers, performers or scholars. Art song here is defined as belonging to the tradition of Western art culture."
Beyond Elijah Rock: The Non-Idiomatic Choral Music of Black Composers
Includes an extensive spreadsheet which is a "working list of the non-idiomatic choral music of Black composers."
Kassia Database
"A resource for musicians to aid in the discovery and celebration of art song by women composers."

Applied Music: Musical Works and Performance

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Music for a Range of Instruments and Repertoire

Music for Specific Instruments and Ensembles

Music for Voice