An image of women’s icon Betty Friedan displayed during the Peoria Symphony Orchestra concert in November. (PHOTO BY BRIAN LUDWIG)
Manhattan-based Composer-in-Residence Stephanie Ann Boyd composed the score in tribute to the feminist icon from Peoria on the centennial of her birth.
“That was the first time for us having a resident composer,” said Symphony Guild president Karen Datzman.
Boyd was inspired from the moment she started reading Friedan’s 1963 best-selling book Femine Mystique. Indeed, Boyd sounded out Friedan’s life journey rather like the former Peorian’s activism woke up the world to the “problem with no name” — society’s inherent discrimination and prejudice toward women.
“‘The silent question’ put to music,” conductor George Stelluto told the audience at the Civic Center.
The evening began with remarks from Peoria Mayor Rita Ali, and the symphony started with soloist Sirena Huang playing the violin concerto “Sybil” that Boyd wrote when she was 19 years old.
Next up was award-winning mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung performing “Sheltering Voices,” which the composer had written to raise awareness about domestic violence.
After intermission came the world premier of Boyd’s “Everywoman: A Friedan Centennial Memoire,” which guided the audience by the movements of the orchestra through the ups and downs of the women’s movement. DeYoung and Huang brought the show to crescendo in an enlightening performance that celebrated how far the women’s movement has come; and how far it has to go.
Throughout the night, narrator Deborah Rutter, who is the first women’s president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., shared the story of Friedan’s journey to legendary status from her humble beginnings in the River City. The program also featured snippets of speeches by Friedan on big screens.
Friedan helped found the National Organization for Women, and the Peoria High graduate’s activism led sweeping social change in the women’s movement. She helped millions break free from lives centered on “chores and children” and the notion that higher education kept women from being good wives and mothers.
Friedan wrote several more books and received myriad awards and honorary degrees. She died in 2006 in Washington, D.C., at the age of 85.
Fifteen years later, her political movement became a musical one.