Alive!, an all-woman jazz quintet, originated in the San Francisco Bay Area and performed regularly across the United States and Canada from 1975 to 1985. Members included Barbara Borden (percussion), Carolyn Brandy (percussion), Susanne DiVincenzo (acoustic bass and cello), Rhiannon (vocals and percussion), and Janet Small (piano). Over the years the group reunited to perform in concert and for special events, including in 2015 when they were joined by pianist Tammy Hall.

Beginning in 1978, the core staff and volunteers of Boston Women’s Community Radio (BWCR) produced twenty-four hours of programming in commemoration of International Women's Day. BWCR served as an umbrella organization and training ground for feminist radio producers and local community groups, with many of the programs produced for the International Women’s Day distributed afterwards to national audiences.

Brown was a concert pianist and music teacher who was also active in the women's suffrage movement. This collection includes Brown's autobiography, Suffrage and Music - My First Eighty Years.

Coolidge was a composer, pianist, and conductor. Several of her works were performed by the Boston Pops Orchestra under Arthur Fiedler. She was also conductor of the Junior League of Boston Orchestra during the early 1940s.

A saxophonist and pianist, Cooper joined Ina Ray Hutton's Girl Band in New York City in 1939. She moved to Los Angeles in 1947, working in clubs and for television and motion pictures. This collection includes a brief autobiography, photographs, music, and clippings regarding her career.

In 1912, soprano Vera Curtis became the first singer trained in the United States (as opposed to Europe) to perform with the Metropolitan Opera Company. The collection includes correspondence, writings, lecture and program notes, and clippings and publicity pictures.

Founder, publisher, and editor of Rockrgrl magazine (1994-2005), Carla DeSantis is a musician and music industry veteran who is an advocate for women in rock music. This collection includes posters, programs, promotional material, photographs of women musicians from Bitch magazine, conference material, audiocassette tapes of interviews by DeSantis with women musicians, and Rockrgrl Discoveries compilation CDs.

A lesbian singer, songwriter, and activist, Alix Cecil Dobkin began her career singing folk music in coffee houses, especially the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village. For many years Dobkin was an advocate of women-only spaces and performed only for women. This collection includes fan mail, concert fliers and programs, subject files, writings, material on lectures and workshops, t-shirts, photographs, and memorabilia. See also Alix Dobkin Audio Collection

Du Bois was a political activist, writer, playwright, and composer. Her musical drama, Tom-Tom, was described by a critic as "the first all-black opera to be produced on a large [scale]." The collection includes musical scores and scripts.

Eames was an operatic soprano who made her debut in 1891. This collection consists of her letters to Francis Wilson Lee of Boston, who was treasurer of a fund raised by friends to finance Eames’s musical studies abroad from 1886 to 1891.

A pianist and the first president of the Women’s Philharmonic Society of New York, Fay studied piano under Professor John Knowles Paine of Harvard and at the New England Conservatory of Music. From 1869 to 1875, she continued her lessons in Germany, where she studied with the most prominent teachers of Europe: pianists Tausig, Kullak, Liszt, and Deppe.

A singer and music teacher, Gallison taught at the New England Conservatory of Music and at Radcliffe College, where she organized the Radcliffe Choral Society. This collection consists of her memoir, My Life in Two Continents.

Glaser was a music educator, arranger, and composer. This collection includes music scores; writings; teaching notes from Dana Hall School, Wellesley College, New England Conservatory, and Longy School of Music; concert programs; correspondence; contracts with music publishers; and audiotapes.

Gattie Holmes was a single professional African-American woman whose music career teaching piano spanned from the 1940s through the 1990s. She was the daughter of a Canadian Native-American mother and an African-American father. As a child Holmes lived in New Haven, Connecticut, where her father owned a candy store. Holmes was a very musical child and her parents enrolled her in the Royal College of Music in London when she was a teenager. Either in Europe or later in the United States, she studied with the Austrian-American classical pianist Arthur Schnabel and with the pianist Lee Pattison, who built the music program at Scripps College in Claremont, California. Pattison recruited Holmes and she moved out to Claremont, California where she built a house and business as a music instructor. At some point, possibly from when Holmes attended the Royal College of Music, she began passing for white. She spent her entire professional career in Claremont, California, and participated in the Los Angeles music scene, without others being aware of her ethnic heritage. The collection includes correspondence; notebooks; sheet music; newspaper articles; music notebooks; and more. The materials document Holmes' personal life, music career, and other creative projects and interests.

The portion of the collection relating to Lena Horne includes Horne's awards and honorary degrees; fliers, programs and posters from her performances; clippings; scrapbooks; and Horne's own reflections about her life and career. Of particular interest is material related to her musical tour, "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, "which toured in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom from 1981 until 1984. Notebooks from the tour include photographs, drawings, fabric swatches and detailed accounts of each outfit worn on stage; as well as guest lists, programs, and reviews for the shows are also included. Also of interest are the Horne family papers, Horne's correspondence, and personal papers.

Lake Mohonk Mountain House was a resort in the Hudson River Valley. Of interest is the correspondence between prospective women entertainers and the resort's management, organized by category, including solo vocalists, instrumentalists, and musical groups.

Polly Laurelchild-Hertig was active in a number of Boston-area women's music and theater organizations during the 1970s and 1980s, including Allegra Productions, Boston Women's Music Collective, and the Boston Women's Theatre Festival. The collection includes contracts, publicity, programs, questionnaires, and notes from meetings.

Contralto soloist and educator, Ellen (Nelly) E. Learned lived in New York City and in Brookhaven (on Long Island), where she purchased a house with fellow music teacher and probable lover Emilie A. Wagner. This collection includes letters from Wagner to Learned; letters to Learned from friends, relatives, and other musicians; and a publicity brochure about Learned.

Singer, translator, editor, and poet Jean Williams Lunn was interested in music from an early age and was accepted into Boston's Chorus Pro Musica when she was seventeen. She attended Buckingham and Shady Hill Schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Winsor School in Boston, Massachusetts, and graduated from Radcliffe College (A.B. 1955). She also studied voice at the New England Conservatory of Music and at Mannes College of Music. From the early 1950s to the early 1970s she gave concerts at venues in Boston and Cambridge, New York City, and other cities in the eastern United States. In the late 1950s, she joined the choir of King's Chapel in Boston, where she sang under the direction of organist and choral director Daniel Pinkham. She also undertook some clerical and editorial work for him, in addition to working as a translator and music editor for a number of music publishers. The collection consists primarily of Lunn's personal and professional correspondence, with much of the latter focused on her singing career. Other materials include programs for her concerts; poetry and prose by Lunn (as well as some poetry by others); and more.

Singer, composer, and political activist Holly Near began performing at age seven. As a student at UCLA, she became involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement, touring with Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland in the Free the Army show (1971-1973). In 1973 she founded Redwood Records with Jeff Langley and released the first of many albums. She toured broadly and performed at many women's music festivals and concerts. This collection includes letters from fans and other musicians and activists, biographical information, publicity, photographs, business records, audiotapes, a videotape, and Near's web site. See also Additional Papers of Holly Near

Pianist and educator Virginia Raad was born in Salem, W. Va., in 1925 and educated at Wellesley College (B.A. 1947), the New England Conservatory of Music, the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, and the University of Paris, where she received a doctorate in musicology in 1955. This collection consists of a biography of Raad by Juanita Cleavenger as well as clippings.

The Radcliffe Choral Society was a women's choral group founded at Radcliffe College in 1899 by Marie Gallison, disbanded in 1969, and reconstituted in 1974. This collection, Series 3 of the Radcliffe College student activities collection, consists of presidents' notebooks, programs, publicity and clippings, tour material, some music, photographs, sound recordings, and videotapes.

A vocalist, performance artist, feminist, and lesbian, Rhiannon has performed with the all-women jazz ensemble Alive!, Bobby McFerrin's Voicestra, and WeBe3, an a cappella ensemble with fellow Voicestra members. She has taught her own vocal improvisation process in conservatories, universities, and master classes. Rhiannon studies the relationship between music and healing and has participated in programs for refugees in the Balkans as well as in hospitals and hospices in California.

Rock Against Sexism was a group of artists, musicians, and others who sought to fight sexism and heterosexism in rock culture by promoting women musicians and alternatives to mainstream rock music. This collection includes newsletters, flyers, lyrics, clippings, and other printed material; a transcript of a discussion on political correctness; financial records; and t-shirts and buttons.

A composer and lyricist, Ronell wrote the words and music of popular songs including, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", "Willow Weep for Me," and "Whistle While You Work." She wrote scores for many films and adapted a series of opera scores for the stage. This collection includes clippings and bibliographies compiled by Edward Jablonski about Ronell; manuscript scores of two of her songs; and photographs of Morton Gould, Gene Autry, and Barry Manilow with Ronell.

A student of Julius Eichberg, Shattuck went on to be part of the first all-female string quartet (ca. 1898) and later established a music school in Boston, teaching violin and other stringed instruments (ca. 1895-1936). This collection consists of a scrapbook including 203 photographs of her violin students.

The U.S. WAF (Women in the Air Force) Band was created to assist with recruiting and to "enhance the prestige of the Air Force and the United States." Consisting of about 50 women at any given time, the band performed for military and public groups nationally and internationally. In 1961, amid debate within the military establishment about the propriety of women in the military, the band was deactivated.

Photographers Darci Vanderhoff and JoAnn Lynch attended a number of music festivals. This collection consists of color photographs of musicians, including Kay Gardner and Linda Tillery, at the New England Women’s Musical Retreat, 1982-1983.

Weisstein was a psychology professor and a feminist. In 1970 she founded the Chicago Women's Liberation Rock Band. This collection includes audiovisual recordings of live music and rehearsals, as well as personal and professional correspondence.

This collection consists of a brochure advertising Phil Spitalny's All Girl Orchestra and the General Electric Hour of Charm (1943), two photographs of an unidentified women's band, a brochure for the Bostonia Orchestra, and a ticket to a concert by the Boston Ladies' Military Band (1899).

The Yeastie Girlz was founded in Berkeley, California, in 1987 as an all-female punk band and spoken-word group that emphasized raunchy and often humorous critiques of sexism, celebrations of women's experiences, and demystification of female sexuality. Arising out of the Gilman Street Project, an incubator of independent bands, the group's members were Cammie Toloui, Joyce Jimenez, and Jane Guskin. Kate Rosenberger and Wendy O. Matik were later members. The band toured in California and Europe and continued to perform into the late 1990s. Cammie Toloui became a documentary photographer whose work was recognized by the New York Times Award for Excellence in Photojournalism and the Guy Robinson Memorial Photojournalism Scholarship.