It continues to focus on encouraging women in music, and includes at least one work by a woman composer on each of its programs.
The CWO has been responsible for numerous regional, national, and world premieres of works by women composers, including Juliette Folville and Dame Ethel Smyth.
CWO was the first contemporary orchestra to play Fanny Mendelssohn's Overture in C [scores], when conductor JoAnn Falletta was in the process of reconstructing the work.
She subsequently studied conducting with Michael Morgan and Alasdair Neale at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and with Kenneth Kiesler at the University of Michigan.
The CWO appears on several recordings with the SFGMC, and in 2010 released its first self-produced CD, featuring commissioned works in honor of the orchestra's 25th anniversary.