Q&A CHAIRED BY EMILY HALL

A radical new book by journalist, critic and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Kate Molleson, which fundamentally changes the way we think about classical music and the musicians who made it on a global scale.

This is the impassioned and exhilarating story of the composers who dared to challenge the conventional world of classical music in the twentieth century.

Traversing the globe from Ethiopia and the Philippines to Mexico, Jerusalem, Russia and beyond, journalist, critic and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Kate Molleson tells the stories of ten figures who altered the course of musical history, only to be sidelined and denied recognition during an era that systemically favoured certain sounds – and people – over others.

A celebration of radical creativity rooted in ideas of protest, gender, race, ecology and resistance, Sound Within Sound is an energetic reappraisal of twentieth-century classical music that opens up the world far beyond its established centres, challenges stereotypical portrayals of the genre and shatters its traditional canon.

”Wonderful . . . This is a book of discovery that speaks of music as a life force, that urges us to live our lives through music.” - COSEY FANNI TUTTI

”A marvellous book that opens our ears to sonic worlds that will enrich and delight us, whoever and wherever we are.” IAN McMILLAN

”A clear-eyed, utterly fascinating exploration of outsiders in classical music. Molleson’s excellent book challenges and enlightens.” SINÉAD GLEESON

Kate Molleson is a journalist and broadcaster and one of the UK’s leading commentators on contemporary classical music. She presents BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show and Music Matters, and her articles have been published in the Guardian, New Statesman, Prospect, The Herald, BBC Music Magazine and elsewhere. Having grown up in a sprawling musical family in Scotland and the far north of Canada, she studied clarinet performance at McGill University and musicology at King’s College London. She lives in Edinburgh.

Emily Hall is a composer, known first and foremost for her songwriting. Much of Emily Hall's music is formed from close creative relationships with singers, instrumentalists and writers and finding her own ways of using technology and live performance. 

She has written for the BBC Singers, Manchester Collective, London Sinfonietta, LSO, LCO, BBC NOW, the Brodsky Quartet, Opera North, LCO, Mahogany Opera, Hungarian Radio Choir, Aldeburgh Music, Streetwise Opera. Emily has written 5 operas, none of which are traditional in form and many, many songs, including a trilogy of song cycles with author Toby Litt, on love ("Befalling"), motherhood ("Life Cycle") and death ("Rest”). 

Her music has been recorded by a multitude of artists including the BBC Singers, LSO, Allan Clayton, Olivia Chaney, Lady Maisery, The Hermes Experiment, Juice Vocal Ensemble and Onyx Brass.

Emily Hall is the recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists, the Genesis Opera Prize, the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Award and the Corinthia AIR and is a member of Bedroom Community, the Icelandic record label and is signed to Manners Mcdade publishing.

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