Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Carnegie Hall 125 Commissions Project

Carnegie Hall turns 125 soon (long may it flourish), and in honor the hall is commissioning or co-commissioning 125 new works to be presented in the next five years, if I'm reading this correctly.

Now, that's a good boost for contemporary music; hooray!

The announcement is a little bit confusing. There's a chart listing 21 individual composers, Sleeping Giant, SO Percussion, and the Kronos Quartet.

One thing is pretty clear, though: of the 21 individuals, 2 rated more than one work (Timo Andres, 2; Magnus Lindberg, 3), and...of those 21 individuals, 3 (three) are women. Boo!

Carnegie Hall, seriously, you can do better than this, and you should be doing better than this. I look forward to seasons in which you commission something closer to 50% women.

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