Tag: sjm

The ensemble Zohra, named for the ancient Persian goddess of music, was created five years ago for the female students at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, itself founded only in 2008. “The music performed is a combination of traditional Afghan music and western classical. For instance, their new arrangement of ‘Greensleeves'” — made for its tour of England — “contains attractive new instrumentation probably not envisaged by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1934.” – BBC

“Birmingham Opera Company has traditionally cast its chorus from local volunteers. Now it’s extending a welcome to people fleeing countries such as Sudan. In the past decade, the company has seen 90,000 people take part in its productions.” (video) – BBC

Each of them — in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Brighton — really is called The Choir With No Name, and they’re all for people who have struggled with homelessness, addiction, and/or mental illness. Melanie Webb checks in with the London group as they prepare for a March 13 performance. – Bachtrack

Elspeth Franks is just one of an increasingly visible number of trans singers in the classical world who are challenging long-accepted notions about the intersection of gender and music. Operatic and choral singers, long segregated into rigid categories by vocal range, tonal qualities, body type and even simply gender, have begun to push back. – San Francisco Chronicle

“As a letter signed this week by human rights organisations, lawyers, academics and musicians argues, criminalising artists in this way is both unjust and ineffective. It is unjust because it denies the basic freedoms of those who are attempting to creatively, if distastefully, expose their experiences of subsistent life in the bleakest urban pockets of British society. And it will be ineffective at achieving any reduction in violence because it simply does nothing to address its root causes.” – The Guardian

In short, music ed is disappearing from schools, parliament was told. The government “must act quickly to ensure music does not become the preserve of a privileged few”, the report claims and identifies a number of systemic challenges as a way of illustrating the scale of the crisis facing music education in England. – The Stage

According to the authors, “Hip-hop feminists embrace rap music as a culturally relevant and generationally specific art form that elicits social justice, consciousness raising, and political and social activism” and the contradictions of being both feminists and hip-hop fans. Hip-hop feminism advances conversations about the portrayal of black womanhood, coalition building, black gender relations and black women’s empowerment through rap music. This perspective is distinctly different from the early academic writings on women and hip-hop that focused almost exclusively on male domination and misogyny, they wrote. – Georgia State University

The study conducted by Dr. Stacy L. Smith found that the number of women working as artists remained stagnant at 17%. Of songwriters, women represented 12.3% of the credits affiliated with the test group of 100 songs — over half did not feature a single female writer. Among producers, women numbered only 2 percent, in line with the previous year. On a brighter note, representation by people of color was up. – Variety

“To mark the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which barred states from denying voting rights based on gender, the Philharmonic has commissioned new works by 19 female composers, eight of which will be performed next season. Besides celebrating what Deborah Borda, the orchestra’s president and chief executive officer, called a ‘tectonic shift in American culture,’ the project sends a statement to the classical music field at a moment when female composers still struggle to be heard.” — The New York Times