Woman Crush Wednesday! 5/19

It’s #WomanCrushWednesday! Today, we’re celebrating Ms. María Grever! Ms. Grever was one of the first internationally recognized female Mexican composers. Born in León, Guanajuato, Ms. Grever spent her formative years in Mexico City and later the city of Sevilla in Spain before travelling to France in 1891 to begin her education in music. While there, she studied with numerous teachers including Claude Debussy and Franz Lenhard, before returning to Mexico to continue her education at her aunt’s solfège school. Then at age 22, she married an American oil company executive and became a U.S. citizen, spending the rest of her life in New York City. Grever’s talent for writing music began at the age of 4, but her true debut came at the age 18 after writing  “A Una Ola” (To a Wave). This piece would prove to be incredibly popular, as it sold three million copies. Grever’s talents drove her to writing over 1000 songs (the majority of them boleros) throughout her life. In 1920 she began work as a film composer for Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox studios. Joining ASCAP in 1935, her chief musical collaborators included Stanley Adams and Irving Caesar. But perhaps her most famous and well-known piece is “Cuando vuelva a tu lado” which was adapted to “What A Difference A Day Makes” and covered by Dinah Washington in 1959. The recording won a Grammy Award in 1959, and in 1998 it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

To learn more about Ms. María Grever, be sure to click the link here. And if you have a suggestion for a future #womancrushwednesday, be sure to click here to go to our forums and let us know who you would like to see in a future installment!