[photo credit: First United Methodist Church of Pasadena]
The concert, set for 4 p.m. May 16 at First United Methodist Church of Pasadena, pairs contemporary composers Reena Esmail, Dale Trumbore, Brooke DeRosa and Zanaida Robles with Alma Mahler, Carrie Jacobs-Bond, Mary Carr Moore and Margaret Bonds. Several of the living composers are expected to attend, introduce their pieces and take audience questions, according to the ensemble’s website. The event is listed in some church and community promotions as “Hers: Music Trio,” reflecting the concert’s smaller configuration of two voices and piano.
The performers have deep roots in Pasadena’s music community. Soprano Tamara Bevard, who has sung professionally for three decades, has taught at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music since 2011 and at Pomona College since 2017. Esmail, one of the featured composers, holds degrees from The Juilliard School and the Yale School of Music, served as the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s Swan Family Artist in Residence from 2020 to 2025, and has been commissioned by the Pasadena Master Chorale. Fellow soprano Karen Hogle Brown, who founded the ensemble, has performed with Pasadena Pro Musica and worked with the Boys and Girls Club of Pasadena.
The featured composers bring credentials that stretch across Southern California’s classical music landscape. Robles, an award-winning Black American composer, holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the USC Thornton School of Music. Esmail, an Indian-American composer who resides in Los Angeles, has been commissioned by ensembles including the Kronos Quartet, the Seattle Symphony and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
HERS: Music Ensemble was born during the pandemic, when Hogle Brown — a member of the LA Opera Chorus who has performed with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Long Beach Opera, and who teaches at Occidental College — began asking fellow musicians a question she said reshaped her thinking about the industry.
“Once we can sing and play together again, what should that look like? How can we make it more collaborative and tell stories together?” Hogle Brown said in a March 2026 interview with the American Guild of Musical Artists.
The answer became HERS, which held its first performance in October 2023 at Occidental College. The ensemble, whose name evokes its focus on women’s voices and stories, was created to promote gender equity in classical music, according to its founder. On its website, HERS cites a 2020–21 study showing that women composers accounted for roughly 5 percent of the music programmed by the world’s top 100 orchestras.
For the May 16 program, Hogle Brown and Bevard will sing, accompanied by pianist Jennie Jung. The repertoire draws entirely from composers with Los Angeles ties — a deliberate choice, Hogle Brown wrote on her website: the ensemble will present “a recital of all female composers who lived and wrote music in our home sweet home, Los Angeles.”
The concert is part of Third@First, the church’s free monthly concert series held on the third Saturday of each month from October through July. Artistic coordinator Junko Ueno Garrett has said the series functions as part of the church’s music ministry. “The concert series is a part of the church’s music ministry that is to connect with the community through the music,” Ueno Garrett told Pasadena Now in April.
Third@First, now in its 12th season, has hosted performers ranging from LA Philharmonic musicians to the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles at the neo-Gothic sanctuary the congregation has occupied since 1924. The church itself was established in 1874 — predating Pasadena’s own incorporation — and sits in the Playhouse District on Colorado Boulevard.
No tickets or reservations are needed. First United Methodist Church of Pasadena is at 500 E. Colorado Blvd. The church’s main phone number is (626) 796-0157. More information is available at thirdatfirst.org and hersmusic.org.
Eight composers, one afternoon, one stage. Some of them will be in the room.
