Kate Molleson in conversation

This is part of the Berwick Music Series 2023; you can find the full programme and buy a Series Pass by clicking here.

Kate Molleson is a journalist and broadcaster. She presents BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show and Music Matters. Her documentaries (BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service) have investigated music in Greenland, opera in Mongolia, lost recordings of Arabic classical music and the Ethiopian nun/pianist/composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. Her articles are published in The Guardian, The Herald, BBC Music Magazine, Opera, Gramophone and elsewhere. She was commissioning editor of Dear Green Sounds, a history of Glasgow’s music venues commissioned by UNESCO. She teaches music journalism at Darmstadt and Dartington.

Kate is the author of the best-selling book ‘Sound Within Sound: Opening Our Ears to the Twentieth Century’ (Faber & Faber, 2022), which introduces the life and work of ten lesser-known composers of that period. As reviewed in the Observer, ‘Molleson’s enthusiastic style and eye for characterand place give them life’. Kate will talk about her book and reflect on musical life today, illustrating with musical examples.

Kate grew up in various parts of Scotland and the far north of Canada and studied clarinet performance at McGill University (Montreal) and musicology at King’s College London, where she researched the operas of Ezra Pound. She was a copy editor, music critic and cycling columnist for the Montreal Gazette and deputy editor of Opera magazine before moving home to Scotland as the Guardian’s classical music critic in 2010. She lives in Edinburgh.

Photo credit: David Grinly

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