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Growing up as a Black girl in grade school, I hated history. I was never in the history books. Though I didn't know it at the time, I was intentionally left out of them.
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Kansas City-born musician Shelley Washington is a saxophone player and composer. She cites inspiration from jazz, rock, American folk and other music, and proudly asserts, "I love making lots and lots of noise." She is also a vocalist, and doubles on flute, piccolo, clarinet, and English handbells.
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Today's Beautiful Music features cellist Eva Lymenstull playing Bach's Cello Suite #1 in G. Eva Lymenstull is a baroque cellist and violist da gamba whose diverse career has taken her across North America and Europe.
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Lorraine Hunt Lieberson came from a musical family -- her mother was a singer, and her father was a music teacher -- but she only began her training as a singer at age 26 when she enrolled at Boston Conservatory.
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Today's Beautiful Music features two top-tier early music specialists: The Folger Consort and Stile Antico. Their collaboration from early 2020 concert at Washington National Cathedral featured Renaissance music by women composers -- Raffaella Aleotti and Leonora d’Este.
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Today's Beautiful Music is one of Elizabeth Maconchy's approximately 200 compositions -- her String Quartet #1 played by Bloomsbury Quartet from a 2019 recital at Wigmore Hall in London.
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Today's Beautiful Music features songs by Ina Boyle, an Irish composer who lived from 1889-1967. Her early musical training was provided by her father and her governess, and she grew into an accomplished composer whose teachers included Ralph Vaughan Williams.
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Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre was an outstanding Parisian keyboard virtuosa, singer, and composer who lived from 1665-1729. She was the first woman to compose an opera in France.
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Violinist Florence Malgoire grew up in a musical family. Her mother France Gombert played flute and her father Jean-Claude Malgoire led the early music group La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy in which Florence played.
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Two adventurous musicians trace the history of their fruitful collaboration in a set of pieces both ferocious and beautiful.