Dallas names next six women conductors

Dallas names next six women conductors

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norman lebrecht

October 09, 2019

Dallas Opera has named the next six trainees in its phenomenally successful scheme, launched five years ago.

The November 2019 crop are:
– Tiffany Chang (USA)
– Jane Kim (USA) replacing Jiannen Cheng of China, who suffered US visa delays
– Tamara Dworetz (USA)

– Marta Kluczyńska (Poland, above)
– Madeline Tsai (Taiwan)
– Molly Turner (USA)

Comments

  • And Nodoka Okisawa, 32, who won the All-Japan Conducting Competition last year and the Besançon International Competition this year?

  • MCSchumann says:

    Conducting program for women… how did we get here? Access to training should be based on talent only. Access to music positions should be based on talent only. Access to education, composition commisions etc. should be blind to anything except talent (of course those looking for this talent should do a better job in finding this talent and not overlook anyone). Sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and national origin should never be taken into account in art, and here we have a program ONLY for women. This is just so wrong.

    • FrauGeigerin says:

      Couldn’t agree more! Talent and skill only.

      • Bruce says:

        “Talent and skill only.”

        There was a time, not so long ago, when you, FrauGeigerin, could never have gotten into the Berlin Philharmonic no matter how talented and skilled you were.

    • SpareMe says:

      We got here because women have to compete in an uneven playing field you either know nothing about the classical music world or are.wilfilly ignorant.

    • Bruce says:

      “Sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and national origin should never be taken into account in art” (emphasis mine)

      No they should not; and yet they are, and have been for centuries.

    • Tod Brody says:

      Wow — five “shoulds” in one paragraph. Must be frustrating to see how the world is not in line with your correctitude.

  • Michael Fine says:

    I was very impressed by Kristiian Poska at her first concert as chief conductor of the Flanders SO

    • Novagerio says:

      Yes, where is Kristiina Poska? Are those women any good? Or are they just there for being the politically correct gender?

  • ViolinistWithoutBorders says:

    This program is absurd.

    By the way, one of them is really mediocre. Can’t really conduct, and cannot go 5 minutes talking or write more than 20 words on social media without reminding you that she is a woman conductor #womenconductors.
    Given her complete lack of talent and skill there is no way she would ever get the chance to conduct anywhere if it wasn’t because she is a woman and there are right now so many programs like this.

    • SpareMe says:

      Lol. Jealousy is such a bad look

    • Bruce says:

      And yet, shockingly, there are any number of mediocre male conductors out there (depending on whom you ask) who seem to be maintaining careers without any trouble. Currentzis and Nagano are two who come to mind, as they often come in for criticism on this site.

      • FrauGeigerin says:

        Nagano is the worst conductor I have ever worked with. Period.
        That doesn’t change the fact that affirmative action is not the way to achive real equality.

  • Bruce says:

    If one were to accept the idea that women have had limited opportunities in the past because of their sex, and if one were to accept the idea of “levelling the playing field” (i.e. acknowledging that the field has been tilted), then it might be helpful to imagine the playing field as a tray — a big square or rectangle with sides.

    The tray is tilted to one side. If the tray is full of water, then all you have to do is make it level, and the water will level out all by itself. But if the tray is full of sand, then the particles will resist movement and will stay piled up at one end of the tray; so you then have to tilt the tray in the other direction to get things to move. In this analogy, the world of conducting (indeed, the world in general) is more like a tray of sand than a tray of water.

    Something else to keep in mind is that (as far as I’m aware) none of these women’s conducting programs are actually taking work or opportunities away from men. This isn’t an all-gender program that has been changed to exclude men. All the opportunities that were previously available to men are still out there.

    If you want to complain that the zeitgeist is now in favor of women conductors over men, then you might be right. The tray of sand may need to be tilted back and forth a few times before things truly level out.

    For the moment, though, how long have women conductors had (or been thought to have) this unfair advantage? Five years? Ten? Compare that to how long men have had an unfair advantage due to their sex. If this is still going on in a few hundred years, then the numbers might be close.

  • Scott Giles says:

    Marta Kluczyńska is going to be an exciting conductor. There are very few people of quality in the latest crops of musicians…she, though, is promising.

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