Writing
Leah writes for a wide variety of outlets on women's history, and on classical music. She has a regular column in Choir & Organ, and you can follow her on Substack here. She is open to commissions for features, profiles and reviews. Some of her recent writing is below.
Leah's academic work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. Selected writing includes:
- Classical music has survived for centuries. Will AI kill it?, Financial Times
- Conservatoires need cultural change to fix their misconduct crisis, OperaNow
- Fashion, Fabrics & Fishtails: Why we need to talk about performers' clothes, The Guardian
- "Trump disgusts me": Pianist András Schiff on why he won't perform in America, Financial Times
- Daniel Blumberg won an Oscar for The Brutalist - now he's reviving the music of the Shakers, Financial Times
- "My old uncastrated wild cat": Ethel Smyth and Virginia Woolf, The London Magazine
- Cassandra Miller: "People only really write music for their friends, right?", Financial Times
- How apartheid shaped classical music, The New Statesman
- How Aigul Akhmetshina went from the Urals to opera's most in-demand Carmen, Financial Times
- Avril Coleridge-Taylor, today's composer, Prospect Magazine
- Kerry Andrew: ‘I don't think I was always heard as a teenager', Choir & Organ
- Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at Glyndebourne, OperaNow
- Classical Music's Women Problem, The Daily Telegraph
- Conductor Alice Farnham on Imogen Holst, Choir & Organ
- Static Opulence: On Frederick Delius's worldliness, The London Review of Books
- Broadening the Canon: Miriam Gideon, Choir & Organ
- Time's Echo: Music as Witness to the Holocaust and History, Financial Times
- Composer of the Month: Imogen Holst, BBC Music Magazine
- Rachmaninoff's Enduring Melodies: 150 years of Rachmaninoff, The New Statesman
- Composer of the Month: Ruth Gipps, BBC Music Magazine
- Hisako Kawamura is rediscovering music and rethinking concert programmes, Bachtrack
- Composer of the Month: Rebecca Clarke, BBC Music Magazine
- Out of the Woods: On recording Ethel Smyth's second opera Der Wald, VAN Magazine
- Composer of the Month: Doreen Carwithen, BBC Music Magazine
- Without Ethel Smyth and classical music's forgotten women, we only tell half the story, The Guardian
Leah's academic work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. Selected writing includes:
- 'Elizabeth Maconchy's Predecessors', Elizabeth Maconchy in Context eds. Justin Vickers & Lucy Walker (Cambridge University Press, 2026)
- 'Women Composers and Feminism', The Cambridge Companion to Women Composers eds. Matthew Head & Susan Wollenberg (Cambridge University Press, 2024)
- 'Shaping the Narrative: Musicology for a Public', The Routledge Companion to Applied Musicology ed. Christopher Dromey (Routledge, 2023)
- 'Approaching Incidental Music: "Reflexive Performance" and Meaning in Till Damaskus (III)', Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 147/2 (2022), 495-532
- 'Shakespeare in Sweden: Wilhelm Stenhammar and Modern Theatre Music', The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music eds. Christopher R. Wilson & Mervyn Cooke (Oxford University Press, 2022)
- 'Composing a Nordic Renaissance: Ture Rangström's Music for Till Damaskus (III)', Music's Nordic Breakthrough: Aesthetics, Modernity, and Cultural Exchange, 1890-1930 eds. Philip Bullock & Daniel M. Grimley (Boydell & Brewer, 2021)
- 'Game of Thrones: Music in Complex TV', Music & the Moving Image, Vol. 13/1 (2020), 21-42
- 'Scaramouche, Scaramouche: Sibelius on Stage', Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 145/2 (2020), 417-456
- '"Clear, Happy & Naïve": Wilhelm Stenhammar's Music for As You Like It', Music & Letters, Vol. 99/3 (2018), 352-385