“If you attend a concert by the San Francisco Symphony during the coming month, you’re likely to witness something that has thus far been shamefully rare: a woman on the podium of Davies Symphony Hall, conducting the orchestra,” writes Joshua Kosman in Thursday’s (4/28) San Francisco Chronicle. “May begins with the welcome return of Xian Zhang, the Chinese American music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra…. Then comes Karina Canellakis, the New York-born artist who holds posts in Amsterdam, London and Berlin. Nathalie Stutzmann, … about to take up the post of music director with the Atlanta Symphony—is set to make her San Francisco Symphony debut at the end of the month, and Ruth Reinhardt, the young assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony, arrives the week after that. Where did all these women suddenly come from? One answer, a little glib but not entirely wrong, is to say that they’ve always been here. The number of women working in this field is large… Genuine progress is being made. More women are pursuing conducting careers, and more are finding success in it…. The other [answer] is that we still have a long way to go.”
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