Emerging Black Composers

Kyle Rivera

Photo courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

No photographer credited.

San Francisco Symphony has announced that Kyle Rivera, currently a master's student in music composition at Yale, has won the fifth Emerging Black Composers Project prize. Congratulations to Mr. Rivera!

Before I post the press release, let me note the previous winners:

• Jens Ibsen
• Xavier Muzik
• Tyler Taylor
• Trevor Weston

"Additional prizes" have been awarded to the following:

• Jonathan Bingham
• Shawn Okpebholo
• Sumi Tonooka

Of the eight composers who've won or been awarded prizes, seven are men. And this is an anonymous competition. Is this a "pipeline problem"? Not enough women applying? Maybe there should be some recruitment. I'm certainly curious about the percentage of composers who are Black women.

The press release is below the jump. There are some typos - missing spaces - in the original.

International Women's Day

On International Women's Day, I can't do any better than point to composer Pauline Oliveros's 1970 NY Times essay on women composers. I am driven slightly mad by it, because what she said 55 years ago is still so true today. Take this, for example:

At last, the dying symphony and opera organizations may have to wake up to the fact that music of our time is necessary to draw audiences from the people under 30. The mass media, radio, TV and the press, could have greater influence in encouraging American music by ending the competition between music of the past and music of the present.

JFC, some things never change. Audience members who were under 30 in 1970 are now 55 and up. Then there's this:

The second trend is, of course, dependent on the first because of the cultural deprivation of women in the past. Critics do a great deal of damage by wishing to discover “greatness.” It does not matter that not all composers are great composers; it matters that this activity be encouraged among all the population, that we communicate with each other in non-destructive ways. Women composers are very often dismissed as minor or light weight talents on the basis of one work by critics who have never examined their scores or waited for later developments.

It's infinitely harder to get anywhere in classical music if you're a woman than if you're a man, from getting your music performed if you're a composer to getting into an orchestra or getting a principal position if you're an instrumentalist to getting a highly visible job if you're a conductor. Just think about how many top level orchestras in the U.S. have or about about to have women as their music directors: three (3). 

Those are the Atlanta Symphony, where Nathalie Stutzmann is music director; the Buffalo Philharmonic, an orchestra that seriously punches about its budget, where JoAnn Falletta has been music director for many years, following in the footsteps of Lukas Foss, MTT, and other fine conductors, and the New Jersey Philharmonic, where Xian Zhang is shortly moving to the Seattle Symphony. Do you think a woman will replace her? I suppose we can hope that one or more of the LA Phil, SFS, and Cleveland might hire women, not that I'm holding my breath over this.

And of course, you are way more likely to be harassed or raped than a man when you're in school or in a male-dominated organization like an orchestra.

Updated, March 9, because I forgot Stutzmann at Atlanta.

Satya Nadella Puts His Foot in His Mouth

Microsoft's new CEO may never get his foot out of his digestive system. Addressing the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, here's what he said:

“It’s not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along, That’s good karma. It will come back. That’s the kind of person that I want to trust, that I want to give more responsibility to.”

Right. We should just trust a system that has been screwing women forever. As we all know, men get ahead in computing by waiting patiently to be given the "right raise" by "the system" and by being the kind of person executives just want to give more responsibility. (That superpower business is also stupid. Please don't insult me by saying I have special superpowers as you tell me not to ask for a raise.)

Actually, men get ahead by asking for what they want, whether it's the right raise or more responsibility. Women are far more likely to doubt themselves and their qualifications for a particular job. Here's an article in the Times explaining just how wrong Nadella is.

Dr. Maria Klawe, computer scientist and president of Harvey Mudd College, was interviewing him, and what she told the audience was how her poor negotiating skills may have cost her $50,000/year when she was at Princeton. 

He tried to backtrack on Twitter, but really, he might consider a real apology.

“Was inarticulate re how women should ask for raise,” he wrote in a Twitter post. “Our industry must close gender pay gap so a raise is not needed because of a bias.”

What bullshit. He was perfectly articulate and he wasn't discussing either bias or how women should ask for a raise.

Nadella just set back diversity at Microsoft by I don't know how much - what sensible woman in computing would want to work for a company whose CEO says something so stupid? I would just assume that he is accurately reflecting the corporate culture, and I'd stay far, far away.