Dr Leah Broad wins Presto Music Award 2023

Friday 08 December 2023

Front cover of Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World by Dr Leah Broad

Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World by Dr Leah Broad, Junior Research Fellow & Faculty Member, has been selected as one of the winning book publications in the the Presto Music Awards 2023.

This book, published by Faber & Faber, resurrects the forgotten voices of four women: Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell, and Doreen Carwithen. In their time, these women were celebrities, composing some of the century's most popular music, but today they are ghostly presences, surviving only as footnotes to male contemporaries. The biography recounts their lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrates their musical masterpieces.

Presto Music writes:

Common to all five winners is an engagingly-written style combined with authoritatively-researched content that is both entertaining to read and highly informative about the person or topic in question.

Quartet has also been shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2023.

Dr Leah Broad is a multi-award-winning music writer, historian, and public speaker. She specialises in twentieth-century cultural history, especially women in the arts.

Professor Laura Tunbridge delivering lecture, with student musician on stage behind

'Everyday Beethoven' - Professor Laura Tunbridge

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Professor Laura Tunbridge repeated her inaugural lecture as Heather Professor of Music at this year's Meeting Minds weekend for alumni. As the 200th anniversary of his death approaches in 2027, Ludwig van Beethoven remains ubiquitous, his music still dominating concerts, films and advertising. In 'Everyday Beethoven', Professor Tunbridge explores the friendships, collaborations and musical relationships that enabled the composer to come to prominence. A recording of the lecture is now available to watch online.

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Dr Vai featured in Gramophone discussing the curation of the permanent exhibition Resonant Histories at the Bate Collection

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