The inaugural Fairfield County Festival of Women Composers drew a crowd Saturday in the sanctuary of the Unitarian Church in Westport. 

The performance featured four-hand piano works by famed New England composer Amy Beach to be performed by Justine Macurdy and Patti Preiss-Harris, as well as composer Carolyn Halsted's new "Water Songs," a song cycle for mezzo-soprano, baritone and piano set to poems by Emily Dickinson, Rabindranath Tagore, James Joyce and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Soprano Kathleen Theisen performed her own compositions set to texts by Robert Siegel and E.E. cummings. Fifteen-year-old composer Lynnea Aillery presented her new work for piano, "Searching."  Also featured was solo songs for mezzo-soprano by Cecile Chaminade, Clara Wieck Schumann, and Louise Reichardt, plus contemporary composer Jessica Rudman's vocal pieces.  Members of the Unitarian Church in Westport's Chamber Choir, conducted by Dr. Edward Thompson, Minister of Music at the Church, performed works by local composer Alma Hamilton, the late M. Louise Miller, Gwyneth Walker and Ysaye Barnwell. 
 
Proceeds from the event will be evenly divided between the Unitarian Church in Westport and the Festival organization.
 
This concert evolved in connection with the ongoing Hartford Festival of Women Composers, which has over the last decade presented the work of more than 100 different composers, some of them local and very much alive. 

For additional information on the Unitarian Church, contact John Carroll at (203) 227-7205 or visitwww.uuwestport.org.