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BBC Radio 3 to set Malala Yousafzai speech to music for International Women’s Day
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 27 January 2017
BBC Radio 3 has announced a load of special programming for this year’s International Women’s Day on 8 Mar. It will include a recording of Malala Yousafzai’s 2013 UN speech set to music by composer Kate Whitley.
Yousafzai, the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize winner who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban when she was fifteen years old, says of the commission: “I am honoured and excited that my speech inspired a composer to set it to music and that it will be performed and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on International Women’s Day by the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales in Cardiff”.
She went on: “As the speech is a call to raise our voices, it makes me very happy that it will be sung by a large choir, that so many voices will rise to share the message of education for all. It is wonderful that the message and the music will reach many more people through the live radio broadcast”.
Whitely adds: “I feel very lucky to have been asked by Radio 3 to write a piece for such an important day celebrating women around the world! The theme for International Women’s Day 2017 is ‘Be Bold For Change’ – trying to find ways to make a more gender inclusive world – which chimes exactly with what Malala’s text is about”.
