Women on the Podium

Joshua Kosman had a fine column the other day in the SF Chronicle, about the several upcoming concerts at San Francisco Symphony that are conducted by women, namely, Xian Zhang, Karina Canellakis, Nathalie Stutzmann, and Ruth Reinhardt. 

This reminded me of my response, back in 2007, to a truly godawful profile of Marin Alsop, by Anthony Tommasini. Among other things, he had the nerve to say that "The dearth of leading female conductors is ultimately inexplicable," which, of course, it's not. (This is here to remind you that the NY Times paid him to be their chief classical music critic for quite a few years, years during which the women who were writing regularly for the classical music section failed to be hired as full-time employees and then largely disappeared from its pages. I'm sure that this is inexplicable too.) 

Joshua goes on to write the following about conductor Talia Ilan on the lack of women on the podium:

Ilan subscribes to a mathematical explanation as well. If we assume that conducting talent is evenly distributed throughout the population, she points out, then an all-male profession makes space for the weakest 50% of men, who would be squeezed out of a workforce that was half female. That’s a lot of mediocre men with an incentive to oppose gender equity.

Also: men get appointed to multiple conducting positions, even though there is more than enough talent out there that organizations don't need to do this. Some examples, including one that came to mind reading the biography of this week's SF Symphony guest conductor:

• Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the Metropolitan Opera, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Orchestre Métropolitain of Montreal.
• Andris Nelsons leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Leipzig Gewandaus Orchestra.
• Klaus Mäkelä leads the Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, and Turku Music Festival. He is 25 26 years old.
• Gustavo Dudamel leads the LA Phil and Paris Opera. (H/T Joshua Kosman for reminding me of this.)

I don't understand why organizations like the BSO, Met, and Philly don't demand the full attention of their music directors. Stopping the practice of multiple appointments would be a great way to open up more opportunities for talented conductors who aren't white guys.