Perth Symphony Orchestra is in the midst of a push for more female conductors.
Their exciting conducting symposium got underway this weekend and runs through until they launch their 2023 season on Sunday October 30th.
The conducting symposium will provide intensive training for aspiring female conductors based in Western Australia and is being led by pioneering UK conductor, Alice Farnham, who has increased the percentage of female conductors in Britain from 1.4 per cent to 6 per cent in eight years.
The series of workshops is encompassing all levels of the conducting experience; including an open workshop for complete beginners, a day dedicated to conducting in education, and the Advanced 2022 Women on the Podium participants will record a demonstration video, essential for applications for National and International study opportunities.
All the women selected for this highly competitive program will get to work with Perth Symphony’s professional musicians and receive leadership training from inspiring female leaders which will help effect change in this male-dominated industry.
The Conducting Symposium opened on Friday with the Australian premiere of the movie The Conductor, a feature length, award-winning documentary that follows the story of the world’s most famous female conductor, Marin Alsop on her journey from student to conductor, delving into the struggles women face in music.
Alsop’s certainly a conductor to inspire people to take up the profession. In 2013 she was the first woman to conduct the legendary Last Night at the Proms, an event that at that stage was over 120 years old. In 1984 Odaline de la Martinez became the first woman to conduct at the two-month-long event that is revered in British society, but the rise of female conductors has been incredibly slow.
During the Perth Symphony Orchestra’s program participants are also getting to work with Western Australian based conductor Jessica Gathin, orchestra founder Bourby Webster, and the Methodist Ladies College Choir – and the Perth Symphony Orchestra.
To encourage more women to consider conducting as a career, the orchestra has certainly tapped one of the world’s best. Listed in the Classic FM Today’s Ten Best Women Conductors and in the BBC Woman’s Hour Music Power List, Alice Farnham trained at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire with the legendary pedagogue Ilya Musin.
She is a much sought-after conductor in the UK and further afield particularly in opera where her repertoire is large and varied, and she’s leading the charge to develop education programs that encourage women into conducting.
Writing in The Guardian a few years ago, Farnham shared her passion, frustrations and insight into the world of conducting.
From a male colleague who claimed women couldn’t conduct “because their breasts got in the way”, to the challenge of learning in public, and having few role models, getting more women into conducting is quite a challenge.
“Training to be a conductor is tough, because the real practical experience is so public. Conductors have to spend hours learning scores in private, and a certain amount of work can be done on baton technique. But actually practising your “instrument” (the orchestra) has to be done in front of lots of people.” Farnham wrote.
Back in 2017 OUTinPerth featured one of Australia’s few female conductors on the cover of our print edition. Vanessa Scammell was breaking new ground as the first woman to conduct the WA Opera.
Local photographer Angelo Di-Benedetto created an image of Scammell surrounded by flying sheets of music.
Vanessa told us that conducting just wasn’t something she considered at the start of her career.
“All I wanted to do was play piano, because that’s what I went to university to do,” Vanessa said of her musical beginnings.
“It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I thought I’d like to conduct, I think with conducting and musical direction you need to be able to offer something to the musicians and singers that’s worthy of them and their own craft.”
“I remember so distinctly sitting at the piano listening to a conductor speak and wanted to suggest my own things, but you can’t when you’re in that position… so that’s when the shift happened.”
Hopefully this week’s event is the starting point for many more women to pick up a baton and dive into the profession.
See what’s coming up next at the Perth Symphony Orchestra.
Graeme Watson
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