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Gena Branscombe was born in Picton, Ontario, on November 4, 1881 to Henry William Branscombe and Sarah Elizabeth Allison Branscombe. She was a musical prodigy and entered high school at age 11, and graduated at age 14. She then attended the Chicago Musical College in 1897 to study piano and composition. After her graduation, she moved to Walla Walla, Washington to head the piano department in the Whitman College Conservatory of Music. She remained at Whitman for two years, during which time she met and became engaged to Seattle attorney, John Ferguson Tenney. Before their wedding, she spent a year in Berlin studying under Rudolf Ganz and Engelbert Humperdinck and performed for the president and first lady, Theodore and Edith Roosevelt. She then returned to the United States, and the couple were married on October 5, 1910, in Picton, Ontario, before moving to New York City to pursue their careers. The couple had four daughters Gena (1911), Vivian (1913), Betty (1916), Beatrice (1919). In 1928 she was elected president of the Society of American Women Composers, and received the annual award from the League of American Pen Women for her 1919 choral drama, "Pilgrims of Destiny." Branscombe received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Whitman College in 1932. In 1933, she founded the American Women's Association Choral, now titled the Branscombe Choral, and conducted the 60-member choir for 21 years. She continued to compose until her death on July 26, 1977, in New York.