Libby Larsen was raised as the youngest girl of five in a home with a musical assembly line. "We had to take lessons whether we wanted to or not," she says with a laugh that is musical in itself.

John Doman, St. Paul Pioneer Press "It's important to believe in your own ideas," say composer Libby Larson. Click photo for larger image. More information To learn more about the Festival of Women Composers International, visit www.arts.iup.edu or www.cmu.edu. All events are free and open to the public except for Friday's concert. Tickets to that performance are $10 and $15, available at the door.

Her elder sisters went on to important careers in their own right as the head of the Children's Defense Fund in Minnesota, owner of a computer software company, a nurse and a market researcher (all while raising families). But Larsen, once an industrious 3-year-old who composed her own songs on the piano, remained true to her roots, carving out a career as a professional composer who still composes on the keyboard.

And that's just for starters. Among other things, she became the first woman to serve as composer-in-residence with a major orchestra (first with the Minnesota Orchestra and now with the Colorado Symphony) while earning distinction as one of America's most prolific and most performed living composers, with a catalog of more than 200 works.

Larsen will be honored this week at the seventh annual Festival of Women Composers International, along with Carnegie Mellon University composer-in-residence Nancy Galbraith and film composer Michelle DiBucci. It is a four-day celebration of lectures, recitals and concerts featuring women composers, sponsored by Indiana University of Pennsylvania in cooperation with CMU.

Events run tomorrow through Saturday on the IUP and CMU campuses except for the spotlight event -- a Larsen/Galbraith concert Friday at Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland, that will feature Larsen's "Short Symphony" and "Overture for the End of a Century."

For a student who wouldn't practice scales, Larsen's success is virtually unprecedented. But she doesn't see music composition as a career option. "It's the language in which I communicate," she says.

She says she had no choice.

While a music undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, Larsen couldn't count on making a good living at composition -- especially as a woman.

But she had a "blinding moment" in an analysis class about the architecture of music when she just knew. As she panned the classroom, the professor and the window in one sweep, she saw herself composing for the rest of her life.

For Larsen, success has been defined by the success of the work itself. She would draw from many musical sources: Bach for his "unerring elegant understanding of line"; Berlioz for his "brilliant use of air" and "uncanny ability to make a chord dramatic"; Berry -- that's Chuck -- for his rhythm and an ability to translate American English into music that has influenced generations of listeners.

There weren't many women to serve as examples, except maybe for blues singer and composer Big Mama Thornton, who, with "total honesty," composed "You Ain't Nothin' Like a Hound Dog."

But there wasn't a community of women composers, particularly in Larsen's avant-garde field of interest. "I wanted to know what life was like," she recalls. So Larsen sought them out -- Pauline Oliveros, Thea Musgrave, Vivian Fine, Miriam Gideon.

After 30 years, it's "like night and day." The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers has 900 entries. There is now community, history, a consistent body of professional work and generations upon which to build. "I can see the next one coming," says Larsen knowingly. "You need seven generations to make a big change. We can now, at least, find five."

And what does she tell that next generation?

"It's important to believe in your own ideas," Larsen begins. "And you should use your check and balance system as critical, not permission-giving. Secondly, you should develop, protect and keep uninterrupted time," says this wife and mother of a young daughter.

"Carve it out and don't feel guilty about it."

She also urges young hopefuls to gain business skills -- the kind that aid in things like contract negotiations, concert planning and copyright law.

But now it's a different world.

Now there are mentors to lead the way, including Larsen herself, who also helped found the Minnesota Composers Forum.

"I want to impress on young composers in general, but particularly on young women, that it is a self-generated, self-initiated business world that you are entering, as well as one of the most mystical and beautiful forms of communication that we have. And you have to balance both."