“It’s with particular pleasure that I’m taking part in BBC Radio 3’s International Women’s Day celebrations on 8 March, a whole day of music dedicated to women set within two weeks’ complementary programming,” writes Sara Mohr-Pietsch in Thursday’s (3/5) Guardian (London). Among featured composers will be Rhiannon Randle, Anna Clyne, Charlotte Bray, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Hannah Kendall, and Dobrinka Tabakova. “On 7 March, I’ll be addressing the thorny issue of the lack of women composers on publishers’ lists…. Three things … [make] me feel better about that disparity. One, the industry as a whole is starting sincerely to address the gender issue in a variety of ways; two, the gender inequality on publishers’ lists doesn’t reflect the numbers of women who are actually out there writing music; and three, there are now more female role models in composition than ever before.… I wonder if one of the reasons I’ve always been passionate about contemporary music is because I see my gender better represented there than in the past 400 years of music history.… A great number of the living creators whose music moves, enthrals, delights and inspires me are women: Kaija Saariaho, Rebecca Saunders, Tansy Davies, Unsuk Chin, and Liza Lim. Genius, thank goodness, is gender blind.”
Posted March 6, 2015
