As basically the entire Internet has noted, today is International Women’s Day. (Other fun facts: the International Trans Day of Visibility is March 31, Intersex Awareness Day is October 26, International Non-Binary People’s Day is July 14, and International Men’s Day is November 19. Celebrate things!) It’s a great time to reflect on powerful, accomplished women in our lives and in the world at large—my mother, my close friends, and the cast of Black Panther are all high on my list this year. But just as importantly, it’s an opportunity to support female-driven business, art, and movement, a moment to pause and commit to furthering the careers and livelihoods of female professionals we believe in.

That said, here’s my (admittedly too short, but ever-growing) list of musicians I’d love to see more from or work with over the next year:

• Lisa Atkinson, a New York-based composer, performer, and sound artist. She’s collaborated with the Amaranth String Quartet, the Arizona Contemporary Music Ensemble, and will soon collaborate with loadbang. Catch the premiere of her new work, corpse song, at the 2018 NASA Conference at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music on March 9.
• Kotoka Suzuki, a Stanford-educated IRCAM veteran whose works have been performed by eighth blackbird, UMS’n JIP, and the Arditti String Quartet. If you’re going to listen to one of her works, make it In Praise of Shadows, a fantastic piece for performers armed with paper.
• Leila Bishop, a Los Angeles-based harpist and lead singer of antifolk band Love Underwater. If you caught my mid-residency recital last weekend, you saw her perform on Cameron Robello’s Inept and two of my own works: Take What You Want and multitudes. Her mid-res is coming up on April 8, but you can hear her premiere a new concerto for harp (courtesy of Pablo Leñero) with The Ensemble at CalArts this Monday, March 12, at 8pm.
• Sara Sithi-Amnuai, a fellow CalArtian trumpeter and composer. Sara’s capabilities include classical, jazz, new music, and everything in between. Catch her mid-res recital on March 21 in the Wild Beast, and stick around for her new piece for the CalArts Brass Ensemble on May 6.
• Socks Whitmore, an up-and-coming vocalist and songwriter based at CalArts. Hear their solo work, Sunset, here, and a collaboration with pianist/vocalist/composer Evan Johnson, Sanctuary, here.
• The artist formerly listed here is no longer included due to explicitly transmisogynist views she expressed directly to me.
• Gillian Perry, a new friend and a skilled composer. She’s recently premiered a new choral work with the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble at CalArts, and she has a bevy of film scoring under her belt. Check her out!
• Zoe Nicole, a singer-songwriter in the LA area who just released her debut single, Hurt You. As she finishes up her time at CalArts, she’s aiming big, expanding her listener base and honing her live performance chops. Check her out!
• Echo Redmond, a multifaceted musician who’s always got a bunch of projects in the works. Check out her synth album under the moniker JC Meyers here and her experimental works here.

If any of the above sounds interesting, check these ladies out; above all, curate your own rosters of amazing female (and nonbinary and racially diverse and LGBTQ-inclusive) artists and support them. Your voices mean the world to us.

Happy International Women’s Day! ♦