The Akron Symphony Orchestra will highlight the influential work of six women composers/artists during the 2019-20 season as part of the Stand Beside Her project. Stand Beside Her is part of a yearlong recognition of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which guarantees and protects women's constitutional right to vote. In honor of the centennial, The Wreckers Overture by Ethel Smyth, part of Symphonic Shakespeare has been selected as part of the Stand Beside Her project.

Ethel Smyth was a 20th-century British composer and a champion of women’s rights and female musicians. During her lifetime, she composed symphonies, choral works (musical pieces written for a choir), and operas including The Wreckers (1906), and is most well-known for The March of Women, an anthem for the women’s suffrage movement. In 1922, she was named a Dame of the British Empire.