Welcome to Chords & Queens - the podcast and collective putting women in classical music in the spotlight they deserve. Here you'll find conversations with remarkable musicians, composer profiles, and an events page to help you discover concerts featuring work written by women. Whether you're a lifelong classical music lover or just starting to explore, you're in the right place.

But how did this idea come about? Well, let me take you back.

I started learning the violin at seven. You could say my childhood was scored by the greats - Beethoven, Paganini, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Mozart. Names I knew by heart before I knew much else about music.

Many years later, as a teenager flipping through my ABRSM Grade 8 exam syllabus, something stopped me. Well not something - a name. Helen Grime. I remember thinking: huh, that sounds like a woman's name. And then I remember the shock of how shocked I was. A woman had written a classical piece of music? How had I never come across this before?

This was the era of Beyoncé projecting FEMINIST behind her in giant letters on an LCD screen, the TV show Girls, and the term Girlboss being used unironically. Not to mention Emma Watson's very famous UN speech about Gender Equality. I thought I understood what it meant to believe in women. And yet here I was, genuinely surprised to find a woman's name in my exam book.

Of course women had been writing music all along - for just as long as the Beethoven’s and the Mozart’s. So where were they?

That question has stayed with me ever since. And while much time has passed since that first discovery, the landscape hasn't changed nearly enough. Research by Donne Music makes clear just how far concert programming still has to go when it comes to representing women composers.

So, Chords & Queens is my answer to that. I want this to be the resource I wished I'd had as that confused teenager. A place where anyone can easily discover the lives and work of the brilliant women who shaped classical music, and continue to shape it today.

So welcome to the community! Make yourself at home and have a look around. If you’re a female identifying composer - get in touch and share your music and if you’re just a curious fan of music, I’m so thrilled to welcome you to the revolution! We can only change the world, together.

• All my love, Jennifer Athan x