Mel Bonis, reading about food, and an interview gone awry
Sharon's Weekly Head Dump
At the Spotlight lunch in Chicago, I was seated next to Carlos Carrillo, who leaned over after I talked about playing the music of French Romantic women composers like Louise Farrenc and Cécile Chaminade, and said, “Have you heard of the composer Mel Bonis?”
I love when people do this, because the fact of the matter is that I started this micro-journey by Googling “women composers classical music” and it is very, very hard to look for something if you don’t know what exactly you’re looking for. All of my recent forays into new-to-me composers have come via word of mouth, essentially; I started with Clara Schumann on my own and from there people have popped up to offer me names and pieces I otherwise wouldn’t have known.
Last weekend I suddenly remembered Carlos’ suggestion, so I obligingly ambled over to Mel Bonis’ Wikipedia page to gather some basic information and did an actual double-take as I read the summary of her life. I got so amped up that I rushed over to Twitter to unload what I’d learned:
