Born and raised in the County, composer, pianist and choral conductor Gena Branscombe launched into an internationally renowned classical music career in the early 20th century, a time when few female composers could earn recognition, never mind acclaim.

While her career was based in the United States, she never forgot her County origins. Through nearly seventy years of the Picton Gazette, from as early as 1910 until her death in 1977, Gena Branscombe is a regular presence. 

Born in Picton in 1881 to an established family, Branscombe went to school here and attended the White Chapel Church, where, it is said, one can still see her name carved into a pew. By the time she was sixteen, her family recognized her musical talents. They took her to Chicago for training in composition. From there she launched her career as teacher and pianist — and an ambitious composer, travelling to Germany and England to study with European masters.

She returned to Picton in 1910 to marry John Ferguson Tenney, a Washington State lawyer. The pair moved to New York City — North America’s classical music hub — to pursue their careers. From then on, notices of performances of her works, especially art songs (settings of poems, both original and well known) appear regularly in the Gazette. After the advent of radio in the 1920s, so do notices of broadcasts.

Following the death of her husband in 1949, Branscombe spent summers in the County, and always kept the newspaper up to date. A Letter to the Editor in 1953 is headlined, “Gena Branscombe Scores Triumphs in New York.”

It is remarkable for the time that a female composer should have had such a successful career. A 1935 article recounts, “I frequently recall with amusement the time when one of my daughters was asked by a teacher if she would not have had a happier girlhood had her mother stayed at home and not attempted a career, and how very much piqued my daughter was. She tried to explain that, ‘We’ve had so much better times and so much more interest enjoying mother’s work with her’. And she has never quite forgiven that teacher for the question.”

Today, one might be forgiven for not knowing about Branscombe. However, Kathy Shimeta and Dan Ryan, two American performers and scholars, are bringing attention to her work through The Gena Branscombe Project, dedicated to editing and publishing her manuscripts, curating her effects, and performing her works.

“In the late 1990s, I was looking for a woman composer who set Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem ‘How do I love thee?’” notes Ms. Shimeta, a musicologist and performing mezzo-soprano. “Gena Branscombe came up. I’d never heard of her, and she had lived in my home city of New York. 

“I read that Gena’s setting of ‘How do I love thee?’ was one of the loveliest of settings, and I thought, what the heck? So I ordered it from a publisher in Texas and took that book to my pianist, Martin Hennessey, and we read through all six of her Barrett Browning settings. And Martin said to me, ‘who is this woman? You have to record these songs!’”

Mr. Ryan, a conductor and composer from Boston, tells a similar story. “I love going to estate sales with my wife, and if there’s a dusty bin of music in a garage, I’m going through it. One day in 2018 I found this piece, ‘Pilgrims of Destiny,’ labelled a ‘choral drama,’ and I was like, how do I not know about this piece? It’s about the pilgrims coming to America. There were tons of roles. It was very exciting.”

Wanting to know more, a Google search turned up Kathy’s recording. “I found her phone number and called her up, and said ‘I just found this score. What do you know about Gena Branscombe?’”

He had found only a piano version of the piece, but, he said, “I want to do the whole thing with symphonic forces and a full chorus—how do we do it?”

“Now this is the good part of the story,” interjects Kathy.

“Kathy had just—I don’t know, out of luck—been working at the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library and had photographed the only handwritten parts in a full score of this piece!” exclaims Mr. Ryan. “I made a performance edition and we premiered that in 2019. And that started the Gena Branscombe Project.”

This is the first time the project has come home to Picton.

“Gena never lost her loyalty to Canada. She never gave up her Canadian citizenship. And her dedication to Picton and Prince Edward County was very deep. Everything in the concert is associated with Canada,” explains Ms. Shimeta. “It’s poets she set who were her friends—there’ll be the art songs that they worked on together. And we’ll be performing parts of her unfinished opera, “Bells of Circumstance.” There’s a section called the Quebec Suite with a duet about the pilgrims that settled French Canada.”

Mr. Ryan adds, “I keep reminding Kathy, we have to play the ‘hits’ because we’re reintroducing this music, right? One of the hits is a stunning violin Sonata. We’ll have four singers and a pianist. We’re going to be doing a lot of her art songs.” 

The musical homecoming is Saturday 15 August at Picton United Church. For more information and tickets, visit thegenabranscombeproject.com.