Her Tyme 20xx Celebrates Women’s History Month with MPTF Concert

March 31, 2026

In honor of Women’s History Month, Her Tyme 20xx presented “Fanny Hensel—Ornamental Genius,” a free concert at the Country House Retirement Community in Wilmington, Delaware, on March 8, International Women’s Day. The concert, funded by the Music Performance Trust Fund (MPTF) and supported by a grant from Country House ACTS Community, attracted an audience of more than 125.

The program featured 11 works by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847), who composed more than 460 works in her lifetime but was permitted to publish very few. Unlike her famous composer brother Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny was not allowed to pursue a musical profession; music, she was told, “must only be an ornament, never the root of your being and doing.”

Her Tyme 20xx is a women’s ensemble founded in 2020 by artistic director Rosaria Macera, president of Local 21 (Wilmington, DE), to mark the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. The ensemble’s union musicians perform narrative concerts that are both informative and performative, with programs focused on music written by and for women. The March 8 concert was the fourth presented through the Women’s Orchestra Project, performed in the style of the American “lady orchestras” that flourished from the 1880s through the 1930s.

Her Tyme 20xx musicians, top row (L-R): Maria Dell’Orefice, Marjorie Goldberg, and Jean Stango Puleo of Local 77-274 (Philadelphia, PA); Yehong Xiong, Rosaria Macera, Elizabeth Cochran, and Pamela Nelson of Local 21 (Wilmington, DE). Bottom row (L-R): Nina Vieru Zubaidi of Local 77-274, Irina Schuck and Cheryl Everill of Local 21, Pat Daniels of Local 77-274, Marta Bradley of Local 40-543 (Baltimore, MD), Ruth Kreider and Kathleen Hastings of Local 21, and soprano Shari Eve Feldman.