One of the Last Remaining All-Women’s Orchestras Celebrates 40 Years in Oakland

Sue Leonardi’s trumpet lay dormant in its case for 14 years until one day in 1997, when one of her neighbors came by to welcome her to her new neighborhood in Oakland. He had heard she was a trumpet player and wanted her to join his band. To her own surprise, she said yes.

The neighbor’s gig turned out to be a mariachi band, a style of music Leonardi had never played before. But it got her to pick up her horn again and helped erase her regret of having ever set it down in the first place. Leonardi moved on from mariachi to playing with the San Francisco Pride Band, where, at a rehearsal in 2000, a colleague told her there was a women’s orchestra in dire need of a trumpet player. She went to one of their rehearsals, and the rest was history: Twenty-five years later, Leonardi is still playing with that all-women’s group — the Community Women’s Orchestra in Oakland.

“I feel like a women’s orchestra is such an underdog,” said Leonardi. “And I’m a really big fan of underdogs.”

The orchestra, founded in 1985, was originally created to be a supplementary group to the professional, San Francisco-based Women’s Philharmonic. The two coexisted until 2004, when the Philharmonic shuttered, but the Community Women’s Orchestra carried on. Now, the CWO is one of just a handful of all-women’s orchestras left in the country. “There’s only three that I’m aware of,” says the orchestra’s conductor, Samantha Burgess.

This year, the CWO is celebrating its 40th anniversary and gearing up for two concerts to commemorate the season. The first of the two is happening Sunday, March 2, ahead of International Women’s Day, and will feature women composers like Louise Farrenc.

“What I love about Louise Farrenc is that she was one of the first female professors at the Paris Conservatory of Music,” Burgess says, noting that Farrenc managed to use her success as a composer to demand and win equal pay to her male colleagues in the 1800s. “It’s such a great story,” Burgess says. “I thought it fit really well with the program.”

Sunday’s concert will be in-person, but for a few years, like so many other organizations, the orchestra had to choose between pausing or moving online when COVID-19 hit. The orchestra opted to go virtual. Leonardi says it’s miraculous that the orchestra made it through the pandemic, especially as an amateur orchestra, considering how badly the live music scene was hit at the time. In the early pandemic years, the CWO was still able to put on three online concerts. Leonardi explains that with the help of a click track (a digital audio track that acts as a metronome), every musician individually recorded their own part, then sent it in to oboe and English horn player Wendy Shiraki, who compiled all of the recordings and turned them into one unified orchestral piece.

“It wasn’t easy,” says Leonardi. “But it kept us together.”

Throughout its 40 years of existence, the Community Women’s Orchestra has been a home and community for countless musicians and conductors. Leonardi says it’s wonderful to see women of all ages, from their 20s into their 70s, come and go over the years — and to see them gain experience not just with playing instruments, but with composing and conducting too. CWO’s composer-in-residence June Bonacich, for example, once had the orchestra perform a piece she created called “The Visit with Grandpa” in which the tuba part was “grandpa,” and two flutes and a piccolo took on the role of the grandkids.

Burgess feels similarly to Leonardi. “It’s hard to find opportunities as a young female conductor that really allow you to develop and have an outlet for your artistic voice,” she says. “So I feel very lucky to have this group that I can do that with.”

When asked what sets the CWO apart in being able to keep its doors open after so many years, Leonardi says she wishes she knew. Maybe it’s because the orchestra isn’t professional level, because it’s based in Oakland, because it doesn’t require auditions. Maybe it’s just that there are so many women interested in celebrating and uplifting other women in music.

“I really don’t know what the key is,” she says. “I just think it’s miraculous that we’re still here.”

The Community Women’s Orchestra concert “La Femme Francaise” will be on Sunday, March 2 at 4 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church of Oakland (2619 Broadway). Get tickets here.