Full of spirits: Hisaishi’s Spirited Away is a firm favourite in Toronto

Michelle Assay is a pianist, Music and Shakespeare scholar, critic, and broadcaster. She is the principal investigator of the Marie Curie/UKRI project, “Women and Western Art Music in Iran” at King’s College London and University of Toronto in partnership with UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage centre in France. She is a regular contributor to Gramophone and has been a music critic and cultural correspondent in Ukraine, Canada, France and UK. Born in Tehran and graduated as a pianist from Kyiv and Paris Conservatoires, she holds a PhD from the Sorbonne and University of Sheffield. She is the author of several prize-winning publications and the chair and founder of the Shakespeare and Music Study Group and the Music and Mental Health Group. She is the co-author of a major forthcoming volume on Polish- born composer, Mieczysław Weinberg, and regularly appears in concert.