VIDEO PODCAST: Women Composers - Our special hour-long illustrated feature on women composers includes contributions from Diana Ambache, Gail Wein, Hilary Tann, Natalie Artemas-Polak and Victoria Bond.
English mezzo/contralto Mary Jarred was born in Brotton on 9 October 1899. She studied at the Royal College of Music in London and began singing minor roles at Covent Garden.
She sang Margret in the first British broadcast of Berg's Wozzeck conducted by Boult, was Mother Goose in the first British stage performance of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and was one of the original sixteen singers in Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music.
On retirement, Mary Jarred was a professor at London's Royal Academy of Music. She died on 12 December 1993, aged ninety-four.