I’ve been rather quiet here for the last few weeks, and haven’t been providing the usual music recommendations for Sundays.

That’s partly because I’ve been fairly busy with other work: singing in two choirs, trying to keep things going as a freelance composer, organist deputy work, and doing a PhD all at once means that sometimes all the things happen at the same time and something has got to slide.

But it’s also because I’ve been working behind the scenes on Cecilia’s List. I’m adding new composers to my offline database all the time (though I’m still pretty far behind on actually updating the site with new music). I’m also switching to a more powerful database than I had been using, which will make it easier to find what I’m looking for and make appropriate recommendations.

More excitingly, I’m going to be offering the recommendations a few months in advance. A number of people have told me the music recommendations would be a lot more helpful if they were earlier, and I know from my own experience that this is true.

The new structure will be as follows:
Before the end of July, I’ll release music recommendations for December, in a .pdf document you can buy and download from Payhip.
Before the end of August, I’ll release music recommendations for January.
Before the end of September, I’ll release music recommendations for February.
And so on and so forth; I’d like to be further ahead than that, as I know some people plan an entire programme year at once, but it will probably have to wait until after my PhD. In the meantime, I hope this will still be useful for people who look at a month in their plans and realise they don’t have any music by women.

In the interests of not getting overloaded, and of leaving myself time to iron out any wrinkles with the advance recommendation pdfs, I’m taking the summer off from doing weekly recommendations. This is only a temporary break, though: I’m aiming to resume the weekly, three-days-in-advance recommendations from the beginning of September.

While I’ve given myself an end-of-the-month deadline, I’m actually finishing up the December recommendations this afternoon; so, watch this space and they should be available today or tomorrow.