Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season March-April 2016 | Page 13

“

Women
musicians in
classical music
are ‘...too
often judged
for their
appearances,
rather than
their talent’
and they face
pressure
‘...to look
sexy onstage
and in photos.’

Meet the
Composers
Six of the 10
composers
contributing to
the Centennial
Celebration
Commissions
are women.

The BSO became the first major
orchestra to have a female music director
when it hired Marin Alsop in 2007.

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The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has, for
the last two seasons, analyzed the repertoires of
U.S. orchestras. Of the composers performed by 89
orchestras this season, only 1.7 percent are women, not
too surprising considering women were excluded from
much of classical music’s history. When the net is cast
to include compositions by living composers only, the
number jumps to a still paltry 14 percent.
The orchestra itself shows a more equitable mix of
men and women. The League of American Orchestras
reports that 47.37 percent of musicians in its approximately 800-member organization are female. Much of
that success could be attributed to the rise in recent
decades of blind auditions. A