“Women on podiums of orchestras and opera companies, and as performed composers” are “still conspicuous exceptions to male-dominated norms,” writes Scott Cantrell in Sunday’s (11/3) Dallas Morning News. “The Dallas Opera and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra are out to change that…. In its fifth year, running Oct. 27 to Nov. 9, the Dallas Opera Hart Institute for Women Conductors again is giving up-and-coming women coaching in baton and rehearsal techniques … as well as multifaceted career advice…. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Women in Classical Music Symposium, Nov. 6-9, is broader in scope.… The DSO is expecting about 250 attendees.… Panelists and moderators include … DSO musicians and administrators… a corporate chair, a researcher and consultants. Among speakers will be soprano Dawn Upshaw … the inaugural winner of the DSO’s Women in Classical Music Award…. The League of American Orchestras … has been making a point to feature female composers in open reading sessions of new compositions…. In the League’s most recent biennial showcase of up-and-coming conductors [in 2018], half were women, as will be the case with the next one.” League President and CEO Jesse Rosen says, “What the Dallas Symphony and Dallas Opera are doing is fantastic…. That is a charge to be taken up across the field.”
Posted November 5, 2019
In photo: Dallas Symphony Orchestra Assistant Conductor Katharine Wincor with the DSO at the Meyerson Symphony Center’s 30th-anniversary concert, September 4, 2019. Photo by Ben Torres
