Suzanne Bona

To continue our observance of Poetry Month, this is poetry by an early woman — Christine de Pizan — set to music by Gilles Binchois. Christine de Pizan was born in Venice in 1364 and educated at the University of Bologna. She wrote poetry and prose, and was the first female professional writer of the […]

Dr. Gohar Manvelyan is a choral conductor and pianist. Born in Armenia, she was still a little girl when her exceptional musical talents became obvious. When she was 10, her family moved to Russia, where she studied piano and organ at the Myaskovsky music school. She then double majored in piano and choral conducting at

Happy Easter!   Today’s Beautiful Music features the marvelous conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, an acclaimed keyboard player with expertise in baroque music, leading the Berlin Philharmonic in some selections from an October 31, 2014 performance of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio THE RESURRECTION. The soloists are soprano Christiane Karg and contralto Sonia Prina.       (73)

April is International Guitar Month, so today’s Beautiful Music features the outstanding talent of guitarist Xuefei Yang. The Beijing-born musician graduated of Beijing’s Central Conservatoire of Music, and received full scholarship for postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Her collaborations range from performing with some of the world’s great orchestras to

April is National Poetry Month, so today’s Beautiful Music is a poetic treat: Antonio Vivaldi’s FOUR SEASONS Concertos, with a reading by the superb actor Patrick Stewart reading the sonnets that accompany each movement of the Concertos.     (71) Spring Has Come – YouTube National Poetry Month | Academy of American Poets    

Today’s Beautiful Music celebrates a multi-generational musical legacy. Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704) was a Bohemian-Austrian composer and violinist. Born in the small Bohemian town of Wartenberg,Biber eventually settled in Salzburg, where he stayed for the rest of his life and where he composed his most famous works – the SONATAS ON THE MYSTERIES

March 31st. Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday. Last day of Women’s History Month. Holy Week for Christians. Today’s Beautiful Music offerings celebrate the convergence of these events, with excerpts of Bach’s Passion Music performed by some remarkable women. There’s multi-tasking contralto Nathalie Stutzmann, who sings the solo and conducts Orfeo 55 and violinist Satomi Watanabe in

La Donna Musicale is a Boston-based ensemble that specializes in performing music by baroque era women composers. Cheers to them for their recording, THE PLEASURES OF LOVE AND LIBATION, which features music by Julie Pinel, and other Parisian women, such as Mlle. Anne or Marguerite Bocquet, Mlle. Herville, Elisabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, Mlle.

Today’s Beautiful Music is provided by Emily Lau, an imaginative composer and singer, or as her bio states: “I am a maker of art and communities.” Emily Lau’s range of creative projects include, for example, employing historical instruments to play contemporary compositions, and reimagining Handel’s oratorio MESSIAH. Emily Lau is also founding artistic director of

An extraordinary talent and an extraordinary woman, Marian Anderson’s voice was described by legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini as one that comes along once in a hundred years. Ms. Anderson was born in Philadelphia in 1897, and was still a little girl when her exceptional musical gifts became apparent. Not only was she a singer, she