A symphony of smashed ceilings

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This article was published 29/11/2016 (3523 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Quick — close your eyes and picture the conductor of an orchestra. If you haven’t pictured Bugs Bunny, then chances are you’re picturing a man.

It’s 2016, and female conductors are still overwhelmingly outnumbered by their male counterparts. In fact, when Tania Miller of the Victoria Symphony conducts the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Handel’s Messiah on Friday and Saturday, she will be the only woman to take the conductor podium for the WSO’s 2016-17 Classics season. 

Miller helped crack the conducting glass ceiling when she became the first Canadian woman to be named music director of a major Canadian orchestra when she joined the Victoria Symphony in 2003.

 

Along with other pioneers such as Marin Alsop, who became the first female music director of a major American symphony in 1993 when she was appointed to the role at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Xian Zhang, who became the first woman to earn the title of music director at an Italian symphony orchestra; and Anne Manson, who has led the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra since 2008, Miller is challenging perceptions of what a conductor looks like.

The 2016-17 season is Miller’s last with the Victoria Symphony before she moves on to explore new opportunities. In those 13 years, she’s pleased to see that women in top orchestral roles are becoming less of a rarity.

“It’s a more recent shift,” she says. “It’s been in that last 10 years that we’ve seen more women breaking into the conducting scene and are influencing the world idea of what women can do and be.”

The role of conductor is associated with power, influence and authority and — like a great many other positions associated with power, influence and authority — it is associated with men. And that gender bias is deeply entrenched. In 2013, Vasily Petrenko, the principal conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, sparked outrage when he told a Norwegian newspaper that “orchestras react better when they have a man in front of them.” He also said that women who have families are less dedicated to the profession. (For the record, Miller has a family, and conducted her orchestra through two pregnancies.)

All conductors, regardless of gender, have a lot to prove when they walk out onto that podium. 

“I think most musicians feel that a woman on the podium is an equal potential leader,” Miller says. “Really, what orchestras care about is a strong communicator. Someone who can physically communicate what they want, and can get the best out of an orchestra. Gender is really far from their minds. I’ve never felt personally that my gender has been a factor in my relationship to any orchestra.

“Conducting is an enormously powerful role; there’s such artistry involved in an orchestra,” she continues. “Each composer means something very deeply personal, for all of us. When you have a group of musicians, you have an extraordinary body of talented, experienced people. You aren’t leading just anybody. They need someone who has the ideas, the instincts and the talent to move that extraordinary body in one direction. It’s an incredibly important role.”

Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra cellist Emma Quackenbush is excited to have Miller at the podium for Messiah. “It’s nice to see a woman who’s had a successful career — it’s inspiring for sure,” she says.

It’s no secret that sexism exists in the music industry, whether we’re talking about classical music or rock ’n’ roll. Female musicians often have their appearance picked apart, their abilities questioned, their knowledge challenged. 

Quackenbush says she hasn’t experienced gender bias firsthand. “People are more concerned with skill,” she says. But she notes that the advent of blind auditions, in which musicians perform for jurists behind a screen, have gone a long way in combating gender bias. Some orchestras use the screen for the preliminary selection; Quackenbush says the WSO uses it throughout the whole process.

Gender shouldn’t matter when it comes to mastery of an instrument — as Quackenbush puts it, “there’s no reason why my vagina should stop me from playing my instrument.” And yet, many orchestras have not reached gender parity. The Vienna Philharmonic didn’t have any women at all until 1997, when it made longtime contract harpist Anna Lelkes a full member.

“Even in the WSO, I’ve been here since 2010, and only in the last five years have we reached a 50-50 balance. And that’s ahead of the game. Most orchestras are still in the 20-to 40-per-cent range,” she says.

Quackenbush also notes that there are gender biases when it comes to the type of instrument played, the harp and flute are traditionally associated with women, for example. The WSO has broken with that, too; both its principal harpist and flutist are men, Richard Turner and Jan Kocman respectively. (The WSO also has women in some of its top jobs, with Gwen Hoebig as concertmaster and Trudy Schroeder as its executive director.)

Quackbenbush points to Carol Jantsch, principal tuba at the Philadelphia Orchestra, as another example of a woman breaking boundaries in classical music. Jantsch landed that coveted position when she was still in her 20s.

“Those are the examples that make me proud to be a woman in classical music,” she says. “Sometimes barriers do get broken.”

Seeing women in those roles, whether it’s at the conductor’s podium or in the principal chair, normalizes them. And normalizing them is how we’ll get to a point where, when we picture a conductor of a symphony, we’ll easily be able to picture a woman.

“Whenever I do concerts for children, I am amazed and filled with excitement that, to those young girls, they don’t understand that there’s been a difference,” Miller says. “To them, anything is possible. When they see a woman conducting, they see they can do whatever they want to do.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @JenZoratti