Early Music News & Reviews

Norwegian conductor Grete Pedersen is in demand everywhere just now. A finalist for the Bay Area's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, she'll become principal conductor of the Yale Schola Cantorum starting in 2026 and has been at the helm of the idyllic Carmel Bach Festival for the past three seasons. In a conversation along Carmel Beach, she talked about her organic approaches to early music.

As we discover more about historical women musicians and share their stories with a 21st-century audience, writes keyboardist and theorist Paula Maust, we must create a narrative that does not put the protagonist in a position of deference to the important men around her.

'As regards my professional activities, life has really been divided in two — the scholarly and the practical, you might say. It’s maybe not so different from the early-music field as a whole, although I wish it were not divided at all.'

Change ringing started in North America in the 1740s. It's a musical team sport, it's math for musicians, it's an exercise for engineers. The ringing of the bells in an ordered sequence, as a piece of music, is a historical hobby that's been growing in the U.S. in recent decades. We checked in with the MIT Guild of Bell Ringers in Boston to peal a bell ourselves.