Songbird: Barbara Smith Conrad

From the New York Times:

Barbara Smith Conrad, a black child of the segregated South, did not seek to vote or to ride in the front of the bus. She just wanted to sing.

But in 1957, when this mezzo-soprano from a small East Texas town was cast opposite a white male student in a University of Texas, Austin, opera production, that was just as controversial. Suddenly Ms. Conrad was thrust into the drama of the larger struggle for civil rights. Her story is now the subject of “When I Rise,” a documentary scheduled to have its national television premiere on PBS’s “Independent Lens” on Tuesday night.

Remembering "la Stupenda"

From Fox News:

Joan Sutherland's radiant soprano stretched effortlessly over more than three octaves, with a purity of tone that made her one of the most celebrated opera singers of all time.

Acclaimed "La Stupenda," — "the Stupendous One" — during a career spanning more than four decades, Sutherland was known in the opera world as an "anti-diva" diva whose warm vibrant sound and subtle coloring helped revitalize the school of early 19th-century Italian opera known as bel canto.

She died Sunday at her home near Geneva, after what her family described as a long illness. She was 83.

50 Great Voices

From Women's History Sources:

50 Great Voices, a new series from National Public Radio, profiles "singers who've made their mark internationally and across recorded history." Each of the profiles features audio recordings of songs and interview clips.

Finland: Women in Jazz

From Helsingin Sanomat:

Women have composed, played, and sung jazz over its entire history of a hundred years and more, and yet the gender of a musician may still make the headlines in Finland in 2010.

If the musician is a woman, that is. This was the case last week for a concert of the UMO Jazz Orchestra, with the theme ”Female Composers” - probably for the first time in the entire history of UMO (the letters stand for Uuden Musiikin Orkesteri, or ”New Music Orchestra”) since it was founded back in 1975.

Women of Jazz

From Mmegi Mobile:

Botswana's foremost women of jazz - Punah Gabasiane, Nono Siile, Nnunu Ramogotsi and Kearoma Rantao - will stage a concert at the Millennium Jazz Restaurant in Mogoditshane on Saturday. Punah said their concert will coincide with the Month of Women. The concert will culminate in a grand finale at the Botswana Marketing Craft on October 2. Punah promises that they are going to raise a storm during their concert.

The four divas, who are also going to stage shows in Francistown, organised a similar concert at Gaborone's Maitisong Hall last year.

Although they have always worked together, they will give individual shows. They might collaborate at the end of the show, however.

Punah who has released two albums, has been a leader when it comes to Afro jazz. Just this year, she scooped an award during the Presidential artists' competitions held in July. This was not the first time that she walked away with music awards. In the past, she was adjudged as the best jazz singer during the Botswana Musicians Union (BOMU) Mascom-sponsored awards.

Shelia Hancock

From Patrick Marmion in the Mail Online:

For the majority of the past seven years, Sheila Hancock has been revered as a grieving widow.

After losing second husband John Thaw to throat cancer in 2002, she wrote a book about their relationship, The Two Of Us. Then came the sequel about her journey out of grief, Just Me.

Now Sheila, at 76, is headlining in the raucous, high-kicking musical comedy Sister Act. So is it more Irreverent Mother than grieving widow?

She starred in Annie in 1978, Sweeney Todd in 1980 and more recently in Cabaret in 2007 - for which she won an Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical.

Sheila's success as a writer is all the more remarkable since she left school at 15. Although she never went to university, her intellectual ability was recognised by her appointment as chancellor of the University of Portsmouth in 2007 - of which she is fiercely proud.

There is seemingly no end to Hancock's workaholism. She is vice president of St Christopher's Hospice, an institution she first volunteered to work for after the death of her mother and first husband nearly 40 years ago.

Koko Taylor

From Philly.com:

Koko Taylor, a sharecropper's daughter whose regal bearing and powerful voice earned her the sobriquet "Queen of the Blues," has died after complications from surgery. She was 80.

"The passion that she brought and the fire and the growl in her voice when she sang was the truth," blues singer and musician Ronnie Baker Brooks said Wednesday. "The music will live on, but it's much better because of Koko. It's a huge loss."

Taylor's career stretched more than five decades. While she did not have widespread mainstream success, she was revered and beloved by blues aficionados, and earned worldwide acclaim for her work, which including the best-selling song "Wang Dang Doodle" and tunes such as "What Kind of Man is This" and "I Got What It Takes."

Koko Taylor - Queen of the Blues

Muslim Women Making Music

From the Birmingham Post:

Muslim Women Making Music is a collaboration between Birmingham-based Ulfah Arts and agencies in Holland and Denmark, bringing together five contrasting women artists from their respective countries. Though all were born in Europe they have cultural roots in the middle east or south Asia.

The Women's Orchestra of Birkenau

From Associated Press:
"When Gustav Mahler's niece greeted new arrivals at a Nazi death camp, she knew that any woman who stepped off the train with a musical instrument had a chance to live. Women in Alma Rose's orchestra were forced to entertain SS officers at the Birkenau concentration camp. All the women survived — except Rose.

Now, an American chorus and orchestra is paying tribute to those musicians with concerts in the U.S. and Germany titled "Music in Desperate Times: Remembering The Women's Orchestra of Birkenau."

On Saturday, Ars Choralis will play at Manhattan's Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, whose Episcopal bishop had spoken against the persecution of Jews in Europe already in 1933."

See also: Ars Choralis

Estelle Bennett

Estelle Bennett, one of the Ronnettes, has passed.

From USA Today:
"The Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007; its website hails the group as "the premier act of the girl group era." Among their admirers were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones; their exotic hairstyles and makeup are aped by Amy Winehouse.

The Ronettes — sisters Veronica "Ronnie" and Estelle Bennett and their cousin Nedra Talley — signed with Spector's Philles Records in 1963.Their recording of Be My Baby hit No. 2 on Billboard magazine's pop music chart that year. Among their other hits were Walkin' in the Rain and Baby I Love You. They also did a memorable version of Sleigh Ride that appeared on Spector's A Christmas Gift for You album. Their last Philles single was I Can Hear Music in 1966."

Pakistan: Girl Band

From BBC News:
"Addicted to their Bollywood movies and Pakistani pop music, many are at ease with privately imitating their idols.

But, like all other professions in the country, music remains male-dominated. For women it is another matter altogether - raised eyebrows are the least possible obstacle.

Some have broken the barrier, none more so than the late Nazia Hassan, who took the sub-continental music scene by storm with her pop music in the early 1980s.

That may account for all the hype surrounding Zeb and Haniya, Pakistan's first all-female music band."

Please continue reading the BBC article about the success of these exceptional young women.