Showing posts with label Ambache Charitable Trust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ambache Charitable Trust. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Great news for two wonderful composers, who happen to be women

As of this morning, Judith Weir is officially Master of the Queen's Music. She is off to Buckingham Palace today for an audience with HM.

She is also launching a blog, which you can follow from her website.

Here's Tom Service's interview with her about what she plans to do with the post. 

Meanwhile, here is my interview from today's Independent with another marvellous British composer: the one and only Errollyn Wallen. Her new opera Anon is a very contemporary adaptation of Manon...and was partly inspired by her own experience of nearly getting murdered when travelling around Europe in her teens. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/errollyn-wallens-anon-manon-lescaut-for-the-21st-century-9619708.html


Apropos of women in classical music, I am delighted to have been invited to join the board of the Ambache Charitable Trust, which awards grants to organisations and individuals for projects that involve the performance of music by women. The aim is "to raise the profile of women composers by funding people who promote their music to the widest possible circle". As it was recently revealed (via the PRS for Music Foundation) that only 7.8 per cent of its income for composers goes to those who happen to be female, I hope you can see how necessary such initiatives remain even today. More information about it on the website, here.

UPDATE: Here is a vital piece (via Sinfinimusic.com) by Susanna Eastburn regarding the shortage of women composers and what we can do about it. Includes some pretty shocking statistics.