Super excited to officially announce my new commitment to include more music by black and minority ethnic composers in the show every single week. This includes both men and women, composers that are not white are incredibly marginalised in the classical music industry.

People of all skin colours have been composing throughout history, there is vast amounts of incredible repertoire written by people of colour/BAME composers yet none of it is performed enough. So I’m redressing the balance, actually over the last 5 weeks I’ve programmed at least one piece by a black male composer on every show including music by Ulysses Kay, William Grant Still, George Walker, and Adolphus Hailstork but now it’s officially official.

Still a work in progress regarding specifics but from today every show will contain at least one piece by a male BAME composer/person of colour, guaranteed. And that’s in addition to my gender equality commitment and any awesome music by women of colour as well which will continue to be on the show.

In terms of women composers of African descent, apart from Florence Price who I program at least once a month, including my Fun With Florence segment, I’ve only programmed Margaret Bonds, Regina Baiocchi and Eleanor Alberga so far. I’ve programmed Chinese composer Chen Yi and Japanese composer Keiko Abe once so there’s a lot of room for development and improvement, as I say still working out the kinks, I’m looking forward to making the show better and more interesting, more diverse and inclusive.

I’ve already discovered and programmed a ton of new repertoire so I’m excited to keep it going, continue to showcase awesome marginalised music and keep programming for justice.