First off, much thanks to the SNLC regulars for covering self the loser’s absentee landlord SNLC last weekend (33 comments and 4 recs, pretty good; in fact, better than quite a few past SNLC’s when I was around to cover it, if belatedly – but 3CM digresses, as usual). Perhaps in (over?)-compensation, 3CM the loser is back (not that anyone cares), and actually able to reply to any chitchat in real time, since he’s not in any condition to be out and about this evening.
The in-joke reference in this edition’s title comes, of course, from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. However, in classical music-land, one of 3CM’s standard pet fallback subjects, the joke isn’t always funny, given its very male-dominated atmosphere. For one, conductors have, perhaps to state the ridiculously obvious, been overwhelmingly male throughout the history of the profession. But in recent years, that situation has been changing, with more female conductors making their way in classical music, and obtaining leadership posts with orchestras. Self blogged about the appointment of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra back in February 2016 here, and by all accounts, she has been a very palpable hit with CBSO audiences and the orchestra itself. (As things turned out this year, she will be on maternity leave for the summer, so she will miss the CBSO’s annual appearance at The Proms this August. This raises a whole another question about the appointments of more and more female conductors, but that’s a topic for another day.)
MG-T took up the CBSO post with the start of the 2016-2017 season, which was a fairly banner year for women taking up notable conductor posts, which also included:
* Susanna Malkki as chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
* Xian Zhang as music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra
* Alondra de la Parra as music director of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra
All 4 were the first female conductors that the respective orchestras named to their posts. The 2017-2018 season also marked a number of other appointments of female conductors as chief conductors, namely in Europe, and again all first female appointments by the organizations in question:
* Elim Chan as chief conductor of Norrlands Opera (Norway)
* Rei Hotoda as music director of the Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra
* Oksana Lyniv as general music director (Generalmusikdirektorin (*), GMD) of the Graz Opera and the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra
* Speranza Scapucci as principal conductor of the Royal Wallonie Opera (Belgium)
* Lidia Yankovskaya as music director of Chicago Opera Theater
(*) For those (like self) who don’t know German, the term GMD is gender-specific where applicable, where if the GMD were male, GMD would read Generalmusikdirektor.
In fact, the trend seems to continue with the start of the 2018-2019 concert season, because these other first-time female chief conductor appointments are scheduled to kick in:
* Sofi Jeannin as chief conductor of the BBC Singers
* Joana Mallwitz as GMD of the city of Heidelberg (both opera and symphony)
* Eva Ollikainen as chief conductor of the Nordic Chamber Orchestra
Just this month, a further welcome sign that this trend again is hopefully continuing was with two announcements from 2 of the 3 Benelux countries, as luck would have it, of new chief conductors. As well, one of the above-mentioned maestras is one of the two conductors just named to new posts.
The first of these announcements was last week, by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (RFO, in its Dutch abbreviation), of the appointment of the American conductor Karina Canellakis as its next chief conductor. KC first guest-conducted with the RFO just this past March, so this was clearly a whirlwind ‘romance’, where they’re effectively getting artistically ‘married on one date’ (which contained two performances in two Dutch cities of the same program) for 4 years, starting with the 2019-2020 season.
The second announcement was from the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, which just this week announced Elim Chan as its new chief conductor, after “2 dates”, so to speak, i.e. concert appearances last November and this past March. EC is to start with the Antwerpers roughly at the same time as KC and the RFO (the latter almost sounds like the name of a rock band), again the 2019-2020 season.
One particular point to note about the KC and the RFO announcement was that the RFO patted itself on the back with this point:
“De benoeming van Karina Canellakis is de eerste benoeming van een vrouwelijke chef-dirigent bij een Nederlands symfonieorkest.”
“Karina Canellakis is the first female chief conductor to be appointed at a Dutch symphony orchestra.”
Besides the obvious self-high five, this takes on more meaning when you know that a few years back, the Dutch government threatened budget cuts that might have potentially wiped out the RFO. However, the RFO fought back, with the help of public and on-line protests, and got at least some partial budget restoration that allowed it to keep going. Now, with this historic appointment of KC, although I honestly don’t think that the RFO’s management was thinking about this, it may be that, without deliberate intent, they’re saying to the Dutch bean-counters: you’d better not threaten our existence anytime soon, now that we’ve made this historic move. Hopefully the potential KC buzz will be good for audience numbers in the RFO’s future. (Have never heard them live, unfortunately, and not sure I ever will, so I’ve no idea what audience numbers they get in their live concerts.)
By contrast, the Antwerp SO’s announcement made no mention that EC is the first female that they have named as its podium boss. Instead, the Antwerp SO emphasized that EC is the youngest chief conductor that they’ve ever appointed, and played up that youth and ‘rising star’ angle:
“De 31-jarige dirigente, die in de voetsporen treedt van onder meer Edo de Waart en Jaap van Zweden, is de jongste chef-dirigent die het orkest ooit heeft gehad.”
“The 31-year-old conductor, who is following in the footsteps of the likes of Edo de Waart and Jaap van Zweden, is the orchestra’s youngest ever chief conductor.”
“‘Het is fantastisch dat we Elim Chan mogen verwelkomen als nieuwe chef-dirigent. Met Elim kiezen we resoluut voor een rijzende ster met grote ambitie.’ - Joost Maegerman, intendant Antwerp Symphony Orchestra en Hans Ferwerda, artistiek directeur Antwerp Symphony Orchestra”
“It is fantastic to be able to welcome Elim Chan as our new chief conductor. With Elim, we made a radical choice for a rising star with great ambitions.’ - Joost Maegerman, General Manager Antwerp Symphony Orchestra and Hans Ferwerda, Artistic Director Antwerp Symphony Orchestra
This isn't a criticism at all, but just a fascinating exercise in contrasts. Maybe the Antwerp SO deliberately chose to downplay the “female angle”, as if to say: “Sure, EC is female, but so what? We care about quality first and foremost, regardless of gender.” (Or maybe the fact that EC is female is an aspect of the “radical choice”.)
The thing is, though, that in both cases, I think that gender was indeed the very last thing on both orchestras’ collective minds. With orchestras and conductors, the ideal is to have strong and positive personal chemistry between the baton-waver on the podium and the musicians on stage who physically make the sound, as well as good artistic results that audiences can hear. Plus, in both cases, the orchestras had been in search mode for a while. The RFO’s announcement mentioned that they’d been searching for 2 years, while the Antwerp SO hasn’t had a chief conductor since 2016, which implies a search by the Antwerpers of >2 years. Clearly, in both cases, patience paid off.
Obviously we’re still nowhere near parity when it comes to orchestras with female conductors in leadership posts, never mind in the actual programs, where it’s still overwhelmingly DWEM composers, and the latter will stay that way for as long as classical lasts (if it does last), because that’s what audiences want. But at least this is a sign of continuing progress, however slow, in classical-land. (No Bernie-bro-type idiots in any of these organizations, AFAICT, to set them backwards the way Bernie-bro-type idiots have done here, of course. One advantage of “old Europe”, maybe, in spite of its oldness in places.) Many US orchestras have certainly seen greater female representation among the orchestra musician rosters themselves, where, for example, the St. Louis Symphony claims to be the first full-time major US orchestra that is majority-female.
In fact, speaking of the SLSO, KC is set to guest-conduct the SLSO next January, assuming that we’re all still here by then. That should be interesting. If anyone wants to travel here for it, drop me a Kos message :) . With that, time for the standard SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories for the week…