A Piece of the Pie

". . . once again, the performances of 2 dead, white men outnumber all of the performances of 71 women composers."

Sarah Baer and Liane Curtis made their report about the music programmed for the 2025-2026 concert season by the top twenty-one orchestras in the United States in the Women's Philharmonic Advocacy last month.

You can read the report here.

After the great cultural push made by so many people during the past few years to recognize that composing music is an activity that women and men are capable of doing equally well, the impact it seems to have made on the standard-bearers of classical music culture over here in America is truly disappointing.

I would like to believe that this is an American problem, and I would like to believe that this is a short-term problem, but I think that I might be expecting too much. I sincerely hope that time will prove me wrong.

I am deeply grateful to the Women's Philharmonic Advocacy for doing the work that they do to try to give women who write music recognition. Meanwhile, women who write music can only keep working while we wait for better days, days when we can feel as if we are something in the musical world other than "other."