From 1928 to 1934, she studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Lea Luboshutz, Louis Bailly, Artur Rodziński, Fritz Reiner and Carl Flesch.

The performance was received warmly, and gaining recognition and popularity, the Montreal Women's Symphony signed a contract in autumn of 1947.

Ethel was noted as feeling, “that the contract to play at Carnegie Hall is not so much to her and her musicians the answer to every artist’s hopes and ambitions as an acknowledgment that at last it is accepted that there’s room for women in music.

You can hear the orchestra and interview segments with Ethel Stark and musicians Pearl Aronoff (Rosemarin), Lyse Vezina and Violet Grant States who was the first black woman in a Canadian symphony orchestra and the first black woman symphony musician to play Carnegie Hall.

You also hear from musicologist Maria Noriega who wrote her master's thesis (University of Calgary) and is writing a doctoral dissertation on women in classical music in Canada.