A View from Germany: Classical Music is so Sexist

English translation by Elizabeth Osman of Inge Kloepfer‘s striking June 2018 article “So sexistisch ist die Klassik — Classical Music is So Sexist.”

In 1932, this opera was a hit. Why has no one seen it since?

The revival of a three-act opera “Tom Tom” by African American composer Shirley Graham that hasn’t been performed since its successful debut in 1932.

Diversity Award Recipients

Two Honored for Commitment to Diversity

Music by Women co-founder Molly Murdock was honored with the Presidential Diversity Award in honor of her advocacy for gender equity in music performance and scholarship.

Time’s Up: Escaping the Sameness of Wind Band Programming

Many conductors lament the fact that ensembles play the same composers season after season. The time for music ensembles to make this change is past due.

Dean Brenda Ravenscroft on Women, Diversity, and Accessibility in Music

Interview with Dean Brenda Ravenscroft who won the Society for Music Theory’s 2017 Outstanding Multi-Authored Publication Award for the first volume of “Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers”.

Classical Music’s White Male Supremacy is Overt, Pervasive, and a Problem

Pervasive white male supremecy exemplified by the Metropolitan Opera’s 2018-2019 season (featuring our season stat graphic) which included an entirely white and male composer list, as well as a completely male roster of conductors taking the podium.

She was a maid at 9, wrote a hit song at 11 — and won a Grammy at 93

Composer of popular song, “Freight Train,” Elizabeth Cotten, was never famous, and almost slipped into total obscurity.

Music By Women

The Rediscovery of Florence Price

After decades of neglect thanks in part to a culture that defined composers as white, male, and dead, composer Florence Price’s music is being rediscovered.

How Audre Lorde Helped Me Reclaim My Voice

My white classmates were walking all over me until Audre Lorde’s “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” helped me talk back.

The Pioneering Modernist Who Wrote an Audacious String Quartet

“In Europe one can work!” the young composer Ruth Crawford declared with excitement. The first woman to receive a Guggenheim fellowship, she arrived in Berlin in 1930 planning to write her first orchestral piece.

Europe’s First Black & Minority Ethnic Orchestra Disrupting The White-Dominated Classical Music Scene

Chineke!, founded by Chi-chi Nwanok, is Europe’s first black and minority orchestra and they are disrupting the predominantly white industry. 

2017-18 Season: Women By the Numbers

We looked at all the available information for the coming seasons for 21 orchestras and found that of those 21 ensembles, seven (7) did not program any works by women composers