Leah Broad - Quartet – How Four Women Challenged the Musical World
Highlights the lives, loves, and musical careers of four extraordinary women:
Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen.
In their time, these women were celebrities. They composed some of the century’s most popular music and pioneered creative careers; but they became ghostly presences until Leah Broad, via a group biography, resurrected these forgotten voices, recounting lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrating their musical masterpieces.
Their names
Their names survived only as muses and footnotes to male contemporaries like Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten. But now here they are:
Ethyl Smyth (b.1858): Famed for her operas, this trailblazing queer Victorian composer was a larger-than-life socialite, intrepid traveller and committed Suffragette.
Rebecca Clarke (b.1886): This talented violist and Pre-Raphaelite beauty was one of the first women ever hired by a professional orchestra, later celebrated for her modernist experimentation.
Dorothy Howell (b.1898): A prodigy who shot to fame at the 1919 Proms, her reputation as the ‘English Strauss’ never dented her modesty; on retirement, she tended Elgar’s grave alone.
Doreen Carwithen (b.1922): One of Britain’s first woman film composers who scored Elizabeth II’s coronation film, her success hid a 20-year affair with her married composition tutor.
Paperback, published in 203, 472 pages.
€20.00

Various Artists - In Memoriam – Max Brand
Impressive homage to this pioneer of electronic music, where contemporary electronicists like Patrick Pulsinger, Pita, Curd Duca fill one CD with Brand-inspired..(read more)
Label: Rhiz / 6
Artist: Various Artists
Medium: 2CD
Category: Records & Tapes.
Tags: Electronic, Pioneers.

Blast - A Sophisticated Face
While its preceding releases have much to recommend them, the Dutch ensemble ups the ante significantly with A Sophisticated Face. Five guest artists join the b..(read more)
Label: Cuneiform Records / Rune 125
Artist: Blast
Medium: CD
Category: Records & Tapes.
Tags: Avant-Rock, Composers.

Lloyd Reckord, Andy Milligan, Bill Douglas, Peter de Rome - Encounters
This collection from the BFI brings together four rarely seen short films depicting the gay experience in post-war society. Essential viewing for anyone interes..(read more)
Label: British Film Institute / BFIVD938
Medium: DVD
Category: Films.
Tags: '60s, '70s, Gay Cinema, UK.
