Flora Willson

Flora Willson is a UK-based writer, broadcaster and cultural historian of music. As one of the Guardian’s classical music critics, she writes longer-form features and interviews – often focusing on new music – alongside her regular reviews. She also writes for publications including the Times Literary Supplement and Opera magazine, as well as providing program notes for major performance venues across the UK. Flora has been a frequent contributor to BBC Radio 3 and 4 for over a decade, presenting audio documentaries and occasionally other broadcasts as well as appearing regularly as a critic and commentator. She works as a presenter and speaker for live events and on camera for organisations including Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Longborough Festival Opera, Opera Rara and Royal Ballet & Opera, as well as appearing as a music expert in BBC TV documentaries. Flora trained as an academic musicologist and remains a Senior Lecturer in Music at King’s College London, where her research focuses on nineteenth-century music – in particular the nineteenth-century roots of many of the institutions, networks, concepts and priorities that continue (for better and worse) to underpin European musical life today. Her teaching has stretched from Mozart’s operas to material culture, the birth of the musical canon to Beyoncé; in all cases, Flora’s passion is for fostering deep critical engagement with how we experience, think, talk and write about music.