Women's History Month

British musician Ethel Smyth lived from 1858-1944, and was a composer and conductor. She was also an avid writer and a passionate suffragette. Her compositions include a broad range of genres, including songs, chamber music, operas, sacred music, and keyboard solos.

Chicago-born musician Vivian Fine (1913-2000) was a child prodigy pianist who wrote her first composition at age 13. The multiple award-winning composer wrote everything from chamber music, to orchestral works, to choral works.

Dr. Mary Térey-Smith was a Hungarian conductor and musicologist who trained at Liszt Academy in Budapest. She had a long and influential career as a conductor and musicologist.

Pianist Angela Hewitt has cultivated a reputation as an outstanding interpreter of music by Johann Sebastian Bach. The Canadian musician began recording Bach's major keyboard compositions in 1994, and complete the recording cycle in 2005.

Today's Beautiful Music features three of the Kanneh-Mason sisters -- Isata, Konya, and Jeneba -- playing a three-piano arrangement of the Toccata in F by Johann Sebastian Bach.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.