Xian Zhang has been hired as music director of the Seattle Symphony, becoming the first woman conductor to head a major West Coast orchestra and filling a post that had been vacant since Thomas Dausgaard quit abruptly in January 2022.

Opera Philadelphia has rescheduled three new works composed by women that were delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Joni Mitchell has received honorary membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the century old institution where general inductees have ranged from Henry James and Georgia O’Keeffe to Sonny Rollins and Jasper Johns.