Women in Music UK Blog

One of Women in Music founder members, award winning composer and much more Shirley J Thompson was DJ Ritu's guest in the Heritage series on Resonance FM recently so Women in Music decided to share the link      https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/heritage-at-a-world-in-london-18th-july-2017/

DJ Ritu presents a special show with Shirley J. Thompson - prodigious composer, conductor, artistic director, educator and cultural activist. Here 'Heroines of Opera' features at Tete A Tete on 27 July 2017, while 'All the World is Better Meets The Woman Who Refused to Dance' is part of the Venice Biennale - Diaspora Pavilion from 13 May to 26 November 2017; and she is a featured artiste at the Black Sound Exhibition, Black Cultural Archives, 7 April to 4 November 2017. Visit www.twitter.com/socltweet for more information

Resonance 104.4fm & DAB in London   www.resonancefm.com

Alison Blunt is a composer, performer, writer, arranger, educator and long standing member and supporter of Women in Music.  News of her wonderful work can be found here:

Kyla Greenbaum was a founder member of WiM. She died on 15th June aged 95.

Wim member Jennifer Fowler says

Those of us from the early years will remember her well.

She used to host committee meetings sometimes, where we were all showered with generous quantities of food and drink. She was a formidable woman who was also kind and generous. I am very glad to have known her.

She was a very well-known pianist in her day - promoting difficult and virtuosic contemporary music during the war and after, often as a soloist at The Proms. Also, at the Myra Hess National Gallery concerts in the war. The obituary says her grand piano still had scratches where the ceiling collapsed on it as she was hiding underneath during a German bombing raid.

 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kyla-greenbaum-obituary-93nhb0mnn

Roxanna Panufnik's new people's opera, Silver Birch, with a libretto by Jessica Duchen, is to be premiered by Garsington Opera in July.  More information here.

http://www.garsingtonopera.org/performance/silver-birch

Another powerful and important article from NewMusicBox

http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/candy-floss-and-merry-go-rounds-female-composers-gendered-language-and-emotion/

For some years Women in Music (UK) has been doing a survey of the numbers of women represented in the BBC PROMS season. The Proms is the largest classical music festival in the world.

You can read this year's survey results here.

http://www.womeninmusic.org.uk/proms-survey.htm 

NOTE: Anyone is welcome to quote these statistics, but please mention the source. The figures for past Proms seasons are also available on the Women in Music (UK) website: http://www.womeninmusic.org.uk/

A great intiative by PRS Foundation supported the European Union

http://www.prsformusicfoundation.com/2017/04/28/keychange/

I can highly recommend listening to this week's programmes if you missed them.  LeFanu is a wonderful composer and there are some amazing performances of her work in these programmes.  I especially enjoyed her String Quartet No 2 in Episode 5.  She is also a great champion of the work of women composers one of the founders of Women in Music.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08n20j6

This is a thoughtful and important article about the challenges and benefits of being a composer and a mother by Glasgow based composer Emily Doolittle.  Emily says 'It's relevant for everyone, not just composers and/or mothers, so please read it even if you are neither of those!'.

http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/composing-and-motherhood/

And this today as well!  Fabric recently won its case to reopen and they are fulfilling their promise to make a different to London (and the UK's night life with this excellent initiative for women in their 'Equalising Music' initiative.

FABRIC X SMIRNOFF   SOUND COLLECTIVE