Laura Sedgwick Collins

Laura Sedgwick Collins (c. 1859 – April 20, 1927) was an American musician, composer, lyricist, and actress. Born in Poughkeepsie, she was active as a music educator and composer in New York. While she composed a wide range of works, she was most productive in creating music for the stage and as a composer of art songs. She is remembered for being the first American woman to study music composition with Antonín Dvořák. and Emily L. Collins, Laura Collins was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, c. 1859. Her mother was a painter and her father was a civil servant. Her initial music studies were with her mother, followed by studies under W. H. B. Matthews, Henry Wolfgang Amadeus Beale, Oscar Coon, and Carl Bergstein. She belonged to the Music Teachers National Association, and was a prolific writer of songs for children for use in music education. an organization credited as providing opportunities for women composers at a time when opportunities were rarely available elsewhere. Laura Sedgwick Collins died on April 20, 1927, aged 68, at the Knickerbocker Hospital in Manhattan. Resurgence of her music In the early 1990s, there was a brief resurgence of interest in Collins’s music in the Ne