Gabriella Di Laccio
Brazilian-born classical soprano and founder of the Donne Foundation, which documents women composers
Gabriella Di Laccio (Brazilian-born classical soprano and founder of the Donne Foundation, which documents women composers) has appeared as a guest on 1 episode in TMT. Topics they speak about most include Women composers, Artificial intelligence, Donne Foundation.
In their words
Positions and remarks grouped by topic, each with the exact quote and where it was said.
Women composers
Di Laccio argues that audiences love Mozart partly through familiarity, a privilege forgotten women composers lack.
“We have the chance to have familiarity. These women don't get that privilege anymore. So familiarity is needed”
TED Radio Hour: The women missing from music (Oct 2, 2026) · Listen from 31:05
Di Laccio insists her goal is to expand the canon rather than reduce performances of composers like Mozart.
“It's not about taking people off the list. Yes. It's putting more people on the list”
TED Radio Hour: The women missing from music (Oct 2, 2026) · Listen from 25:28
Di Laccio argues that this erasure creates an unconscious bias leading people to assume women did not create music.
“That creates an unconscious bias on all of us because we grow up not knowing and we grow up just accepting like I did”
TED Radio Hour: The women missing from music (Oct 2, 2026) · Listen from 10:41
Di Laccio suggests that male authors of history books chose not to preserve women's contributions.
“who was writing the history books? A lot of men were in charge, I guess, and perhaps they didn't think we should keep this”
TED Radio Hour: The women missing from music (Oct 2, 2026) · Listen from 9:30
Di Laccio argues that women composers were first neglected because they lacked equal access to education and were considered inferior.
“initially women didn't have the same access to education. They were considered to be less than men”
TED Radio Hour: The women missing from music (Oct 2, 2026) · Listen from 9:33
Artificial intelligence
Di Laccio believes people will increasingly crave live, human-made music and that living artists must be supported.
“We must continue to support living artists because I think in 10 years time, We will crave live music done by people”
TED Radio Hour: The women missing from music (Oct 2, 2026) · Listen from 39:48
Di Laccio warns that AI trained on a male-dominated catalog will reproduce the erasure of women's voices at greater speed.
“Otherwise, we're just going to replicate this image erasure of the women's voices at, you know, much faster scale”
TED Radio Hour: The women missing from music (Oct 2, 2026) · Listen from 35:32
Di Laccio criticizes AI music generation for not paying royalties to the artists whose work it draws on.
“AI creates new music. It doesn't pay any royalties to the people whose music it's using to create”
TED Radio Hour: The women missing from music (Oct 2, 2026) · Listen from 35:32
Donne Foundation
Di Laccio says that after learning Ilse Weber's story she decided any woman with even one recorded composition belongs on the list.
“I don't care if a woman wrote one piece of music. If I can find the record is going on the website, is going on the list”
TED Radio Hour: The women missing from music (Oct 2, 2026) · Listen from 19:32
Di Laccio reports that the foundation has identified more than 18,000 women composers, with over 10,000 already on its website.
“So we have found more than 18,000 now. I think the website currently has over 10,000”
TED Radio Hour: The women missing from music (Oct 2, 2026) · Listen from 16:14
Women in the music industry
Di Laccio acknowledges progress but says the music industry remains male-dominated and still treats women poorly.
“But the music industry is still very male. It's still, you hear From different experiences, still things happening that are not the best for women”
TED Radio Hour: The women missing from music (Oct 2, 2026) · Listen from 29:25
Music publishing
Di Laccio argues that because much women's music is unpublished it goes unrecorded, leaving a vast imbalance compared with works like Beethoven's symphonies.
“because it's not properly published, it's not recorded. And then we have 1,500 recordings of Beethoven symphonies of the same ones”
TED Radio Hour: The women missing from music (Oct 2, 2026) · Listen from 20:13
Gender representation in orchestral programming
Di Laccio says her count of the top 15 orchestras found only 2.3% of the music they played was written by women.
“I published a tiny infographic and it said only 2.3% of these orchestras, the music these orchestras played was written by women”
TED Radio Hour: The women missing from music (Oct 2, 2026) · Listen from 6:42
Appearances
The women missing from musicTED Radio Hour · Oct 2, 2026 · 50 min
Manoush Zomorodi talks with soprano Gabriella Di Laccio about forgotten women composers and AI, then airs Nadya Tolokonnikova's TED Talk on Pussy Riot's resistance.
Often appears with
- Manoush Zomorodi · 1 shared episode
- Nadya Tolokonnikova · 1 shared episode