The Influence of Women in America’s Early Music Scene

In Tuesday’s (3/3) Total Baroque Magazine (France), Kyle MacMillan writes, “After the Cleveland Orchestra invited Jeannette Sorrell in 1991 to apply for its vacant position of assistant conductor, the 26-year-old budding podium talent was brought in for an interview with its then-music director Christoph von Dohnányi … Sorrell recalls von Dohnányi saying … ‘The audience in Cleveland would never accept a woman as a conductor.’ The young conductor, who had fallen in love with period-instrument recordings when she was teenager, had already been pondering a career in early music, and von Dohnányi’s rebuff only reinforced her resolve. Less than a year later, she led the first performances of Apollo’s Fire, a now internationally recognized ensemble with performance series in Cleveland and Chicago…. Sorrell is hardly alone. Indeed, it seems clear that American early-music ensembles have proportionally more female artistic leaders than their counterparts in the mainstream classical world. According to research by the League of American Orchestras, just 14.2 percent of the music directors of American orchestras in 2025 were women. But one need only run a finger down a list of the top historical-performance groups to see how many are headed by women, including Alkemie, Apollo’s Fire, Boston Camerata, The Newberry Consort, and Piffaro.”