BPO Listening Club: Women In Music (Bad Girls And Heartbreakers)

Joanna MacGregor is taking over the Brighton Unitarian Church on Thursday 11 February 2027 for a session of the BPO Listening Club, this one titled Women In Music (Bad Girls And Heartbreakers). It's an illustrated informal talk that opens up the programme of the concert Bad Girls and Heartbreakers, so if you're planning on seeing that performance, this is the lead-in to it.

MacGregor describes the Listening Club as a series of one-hour talks that dive deeper into a concert programme. The idea is to get under the skin of the music before you hear it live, rather than just listening along. She'll be talking through the composers' intentions, the social context they were writing in, and the specific musical motifs to listen out for when the concert actually happens. It's the sort of thing that changes how you hear a piece of music — once you know what to listen for, you start noticing things you'd have missed otherwise.

Because it's an illustrated talk, there'll be more to it than just talking heads; she'll be using visuals to help map out what she's discussing. It's an hour's worth of context on the music of Bad Girls and Heartbreakers, and since it's part of a series, it's designed to be accessible regardless of how much you already know about the composers involved. If you're not entirely sure where to start with the programme, this is a good way to get your bearings.

It runs at 18:00 at the Brighton Unitarian Church on New Road, BN1 1UF, with tickets at £10.00.