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In this Essay series, musicologist Natasha Loges shines the spotlight on five women pianists from across the globe. Each woman faced difference challenges, not only of gender and race, but also social class, sexuality and family responsibilities. Each life unfolded against a tumultuous background of World Wars, the Cultural Revolution and the Vietnam War. These women confronted personal and professional challenges – often controversially – to find creative fulfilment as musicians.

Programme 5. Philippa Schuyler

American pianist-composer and international journalist Philippa Schuyler (1931–1967) was the daughter of a black journalist and a white heiress. Called ’Harlem's Mozart', Schuyler was a child prodigy. Unable to escape racial discrimination or accept her own racial identity, she shifted her career outside the USA, including Latin America, Asia and Africa. Her travels inspired the integration of folk music in her piano compositions. Later a war correspondent and a missionary, Schuyler died in a helicopter crash while working in Vietnam. Schuyler's biographer is pianist Sarah Masterson who gives us her take on the life and music of this brave young woman, and we hear Sarah's recordings of Schuyler's works.