News and music to start your week!

Conductor Karina Canellakis (pictured) made BBC Proms history by being the first woman conductor to lead the ensemble at the First Night of the Proms.  Read more about the historic night, and the kick off of the 2019 Proms Season, at BBC.comThe opening night kicked off with a complex, layered  work by Canadian composer Zosha Di Castri, written in honor of the Moon Landing.  You can also read our thoughts on this year’s programming here.

The wonderful website, Women You Should Know, featured the life and music of Fanny Hensel (nee Mendelssohn).  Women You Should Know features women across history and types of achievements, and we were delighted that they included a historic composer!

Joshua Kosman at the San Francisco Chronicle talks about the lack of acknowledgment of Clara Schumann’s bicentennial year in the mainstream classical music world – and the wonderful new recording of Schumann’s piano works by Isata Kanneh-Mason.

Over at The Guardian, Lanre Baker talks about the “pale, male, and stale” problem in contemporary classical music in response to a new compilation album that only included two works by women.  Read on here.

And Caitlin Vincent, Lecturer at the University of Melbourne, explores the racist, sexist past embodied in opera that much of the contemporary audience has moved beyond.  Read her full article at The Conversation.

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