The Mount Holyoke Symphony Orchestra, led by Tianhui Ng, celebrates the works and work of women in its annual Mary Lyon Concert, named after founder and first president of the College. In addition to musical works by Maria Theresia von Paradis and Louise Farrenc, the MHSO will perform Rachel Portman's Tipping Points (2022), a work for violin, text (with poems by Nick Drake), and orchestra, which seeks "to acknowledge and map out those painful, difficult things, but above all to recall and celebrate the powers and beauties of the natural world and the life-giving wonders of the elements. The spacious beauty of the music holds the darker matter of the poems in its harmonic world. The two have a necessary, symbiotic relationship. Ultimately, we hope the whole work embodies and inspires a sense of wonder, creative hope and imaginative agency in the listener." For Portman, "The elements are in constant metamorphosis, an endless flux of dynamic change. Nothing is certain. Let’s remember, ‘tipping points’ can also be transformative in positive, creative ways. Change is the perpetual driver of life."