Did you notice anything these composers have in common? If you say “female”, get half a star. If you say “living woman” you will understand everything. Not that there's anything wrong with living women, but isn't that weird? In some ways, the increased presence of both women and active composers is a sign that orchestras are implementing all the diversity initiatives and audience strategies laid out during the pandemic and updating their proverbial firmware. Masu.
But it also flies in the face of the wrong history lesson we've been teaching ourselves for centuries: that music by women is definitively new. .
This is not to criticize NSO. The NSO's percentage of female composers is about the same as that of its peers in other major American cities. It's just one reality of hers standing in the way of a much more interesting reality.
Boulanger Initiative co-founders Laura Colgate and Joy-Leilani Garbutt are co-founders of Boulanger Initiative and Strathmore, an annual multi-day event that brings together a pop-up community of women composers for three days. With the festival, WoCo Festival, we want to change this situation. Performances, workshops, discussions, music exhibitions, installations and more. The festival will take place from April 12th to 14th at multiple venues in Strathmore.
Like me, Colgate and Garbutt have observed an increase in the inclusion of works by living female composers in programming since the pandemic, but given the scope of the issue, a broader historical perspective They also argue that more drastic corrective measures are needed.
As Garbutt said in a phone interview, “Focusing on gender-marginalized composers doesn't just mean creating new music.”
“We have to go back to the basics,” Colgate added. That's how we diversify. He solves the problem by doing the work, but no one is doing the work because that number is hovering around his 2%. That's the amount of programming that's being put into historical female composers who aren't living. 2 percent! ”
The most recent report on repertoire diversity by the American Federation of Orchestras shows a small but unremarkable improvement. Of the 5,407 songs programmed for the 2022-23 season, only 12.2 percent were written by women, living or dead (this number was split almost evenly between white women and women of color). Of the productions programmed that season, 73.6 percent were by deceased men, and only 3.8 percent were by deceased women.
Additionally, Colgate found that the larger the orchestra's budget – the more established the orchestra – the lower the number.
“They're afraid people won't show up, but they don't have any confidence in their audience,” she says. “Are you saying that if you put Augusta Holmes or Louise Farens on your season, they won't buy a subscription? That's absurd.”
This resistance to more aggressive corrective action on expression comes from across the orchestra. Long-time musicians who aren't too keen on learning “new” repertoire. The marketing department has no idea what to say about composers that history has hidden.
“All the non-representative programming that's going on right now is a selection,” Garbutt said. “It’s a conscious choice to exclude composers we know exist and whose scores we have.”
The mission of the Boulanger Initiative, which Colgate co-founded with Garbutt in 2019, is to promote music composed by “women and all gender marginalized composers” through “performance, education, research, consulting, and commissioning.” It is to be. In doing so, the organization (named after French composer Lili Boulanger) is dispelling “the pernicious myth that women have historically produced little artistic value,” according to its website. He says he is aiming to do so.
One key aspect of this initiative is a curriculum guide for educators that introduces students to the history of women composers before traditional music history teaches them.
“I think this is huge,” Garbutt said by phone. “It's no surprise that women have always composed music. And by incorporating this into the curriculum earlier on, there will be no need to emphasize it decades later.”
But at the heart of the Initiative's work is the Boulanger Initiative Database (BID), an open-access collection of more than 8,000 works by more than 1,200 composers, and a collection of works by musicians, conductors, administrators, and independent Freely available to music seekers.
We also offer consulting services for orchestras, helping them identify works by women that complement their canonical centerpieces. It also avoids the “stuffing peanuts” approach to programming, where short works by underrated composers are “sprinkled” to fill the remaining space.
But at Colgate, the first step to change is to change the first step. Colgate, himself a longtime orchestral musician and current concertmaster of the National Philharmonic, is well aware of the fundamental place of excerpts in classical music education, and is well aware of the fundamental place of excerpts in music orchestras. Short passages are required of potential musicians to play (for example, the first bit). the third movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 39 for violinists, or the third movement of Brahms' Symphony No. 3 for cellists).
“The excerpts that were drilled into your head by your sophomore year of undergrad? They're all still there,” she says. “Our entire school structure is based on excerpts for orchestral auditions. But if today's undergraduates are listening to works by Florence Price and Margaret Bonds at the same level that I grew up watching, , the world might be different in 20 years if people knew about Louise Farens' work.
Through the initiative's 'Redefining the Canon' program, orchestras submit their current list of excerpts, and a team of 'excerpt collectors' comb through pieces from the BID to create alternatives to more popular selections. Look for excerpts that are sufficiently comparable in their technical requirements. In collaboration with this initiative, the National Philharmonic is now one of the first orchestras to adopt an excerpt list featuring a large portion of historically marginalized composers.
“The more orchestras that participate, the faster we will reach our goal,” she says.
Of course, a major part of increasing the visibility of female composers is creating more space for their music to be heard. This is where WCo Fest comes into play.
Produced by the Boulanger Initiative and co-hosted by Strathmore, WoCo Fest is an attempt to fill a weekend and several spaces with the music of women composers of all eras, musicians at the top of their game, and listeners hungry for something new. represents. Prove it can be done.
Friday's kickoff party at AMP by Strathmore will feature cello and bandoneon duo Arco & songwriter and filmmaker Bea Steadwell, Talea Quartet (with workshops scheduled over the weekend), and Cajun Persia. Performances will be performed by viola duo Tallah Rouge and cellist Amanda Gookin. others.
From there, the festival aims to thread through multiple eras of music, with the theme “Evolution” for its 2024 edition. Baroque ensemble Musica Spira presents a concert of music by Isabella Leonarda, Maria Percona, Francesca Caccini, Antonia Bembo and Chiara Margarita Cozzolani on Saturday afternoon.
Next, Spanish cellist and composer Andrea Casalbios will perform his own work set to music by Nadia Boulanger (Lili's sister). The Ghost Ensemble will perform a program commemorating its 12-year collaboration with composer, oboist and installation artist Skye McCrae (his inflatable “Harmoni Tree” sculpture will also be on display).
Pianist Sarah Cahill presents “The Future is'', a hopscotch program that explores the Baroque era (Elisabeth-Claude Jaquet de Laguerre), the Romantic era (Farenc), the 20th century (Margaret Bonds), and the present day. Female” concludes Saturday’s performance. She is (Teresa Wong).
The festival concludes Sunday with an appearance by four-time Grammy Award-winning jazz drummer and producer Terry Lyne Carrington, along with guitarist Mary Halverson, pianist Angelica Sanchez, trumpeter Milena Custado and bassist Isaac・The New Standard Ensemble featuring Coyle will be on stage. , dancer Christiana Hunte and vocalist Vuyo Sotashe.
In addition to offering a weekend of high-quality performances, Colgate and Garbutt will create an immersive space for women from all areas of classical music to come together, network, collaborate, and most importantly, listen to each other's music. We would like to create this environment together with WoCo. Garbutt points to Carrington's favorite quote as something of a guiding principle.
“She said our work is corrective and collective,” Garbutt says. “That applies to all of us. It feels so important.”
Woko Festival: Evolution It will be held at Strathmore from April 12th to 14th. boulangerinitiative.org.