News and music to start your week!
Congratulations to Eun Sun Kim, pictured, who was named the next music director of the San Francisco Opera – and the only Asian woman to hold an artistic leadership role with any major opera company in North America. Read more at Datebook (of the SF Chronicle), the San Francisco Classical Voice, and the New York Times.
In other conductor news, Karen Kamensek is the fifth woman to conduct the Met Opera (as noted in the NYTimes) and on Nov. 23 she became only the second woman to conduct one of the Met’s illustrious Live HD broadcasts, Philip Glass’ Ahknaten, shown in more than 2,200 theatres worldwide in 70 countries. Susanna Mälkki was the first, when she led Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin in 2015. Are we the only one to point out the significance of Kamensek’s role? Because “glass ceilings” (insert pun here about a glass ceiling with actual Glass…) aren’t really broken unless there are some beyond “the first” to have an opportunity.
Do you listen to The Daffodil Perspective? The weekly radio show boasts equal representation in the programming – and this week’s show features music from Helen Hopekirk and Anna Amalia. Listen below, and learn how you can support this important work here.
Forbes has a piece titled The Equivocal Business of Women in the Music Industry – discussing the work of women in classical and popular genres, with good news and bad.
And also, by veteran journalist Allan Kozinn, insightful writing about new recordings of works by women composers in the San Francisco Classical Voice. Kozinn considers the larger issues surrounding historic women composers — how often their music was not valued, and thus relegated to the dustbin. For instance, Lilian Elkington, a British composer from whom one lone work survives.
Highly regarded in her lifetime, composer Louise Farrenc is gradually being rediscovered and widely celebrated. Thus, a recent performance of her third Symphony, by the Lakeview Orchestra in Chicago, was praised in the Chicago Classical Review.
Be sure to let us know what we missed! [email protected]