In Tuesday’s (3/8) Rhapsody Music News, Thomas May writes that female soloists and orchestra members are “an indispensable presence” in classical music. “But this is overwhelmingly in service to male composers, under male conductors…. Yet some recent developments bring encouraging news. Could we be nearing a tipping point? Watching the Mirga effect in action is one cause for optimism. The recognition the young conductor from Lithuania, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, has been earning … lends hope. Last July this 29-year-old musical phenomenon became associate conductor at the Los Angeles Philharmonic… Gražinytė-Tyla … was just appointed music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in the U.K.” Other female conductors mentioned include Susanna Mälkki, Xian Zhang (incoming music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra), the Berkeley Symphony’s Joãna Carneiro, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Marin Alsop. “It will take longer for the work of women composers to establish itself in the repertory…. Last year Bang on a Can co-founder Julia Wolfe won the Pulitzer for Anthracite Fields.… Over the past decade, three women [Julia Wolfe, Caroline Shaw, and Jennifer Higdon] have … taken the Pulitzer Prize in Music…. Anna Clyne recently completed a prestigious multiyear residency as composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.”
Posted March 11, 2016
