VIDEO PODCAST: Find out about composers from unusual places, including Gerard Schurmann, Giya Kancheli, Nazib Zhiganov and Nodar Gabunia, about singing in cars, and meet Jim Hutton from the RLPO and some of our regular contributors in this eighty-minute February 2021 video.
VIDEO PODCAST: John Dante Prevedini leads a discussion about Youth Involvement in Classical Music - this specially extended illustrated feature includes contributions from Christopher Morley, Gerald Fenech, Halida Dinova, Patricia Spencer and Roderic Dunnett.
LISTENING TO TCHAIKOVSKY: Béla Hartmann uses his knowledge of Eastern Europe to argue against the banning of all Russian culture following Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
South-African contralto Sybil Michelow was born in Johannesburg on 12 August 1925. After studies at Witwatersrand University, she studied piano in London with Franz Reizenstein and singing with Mary Jarred. She made her debut as a singer in the 1950s in London, and sang Rule Britannia at the 1968 Last Night of the Proms. Wilfred Josephs and Malcolm Williamson both wrote large-scale works for her.
She taught singing at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London from 1956 to 1958.
As a composer, she wrote incidental music for two Brecht plays, and for Children's Stories with music for the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
Sybil died in London on 5 January 2013, aged eighty-seven.
Think of Something Beautiful - Malcolm Miller pays tribute to contralto Sybil Michelow