Until a few years ago, the chances of seeing a woman on the podium conducting an orchestra were approximately zero.
Today, they’re popping up everywhere. Keri-Lynn Wilson, a Canadian-American, guest-conducts all over the world, Barbara Hannigan, also a Canadian, guest-conducts and singsthe world over too. And the American, Marin Alsop, is the leading woman conductor on any podium.
But a Canadian woman conducting a Canadian orchestra on more than a drive-by basis?Fuhgeddaboudit.
But that too is changing.
In 2023, Tapestry Opera created a masterclass program in conducting for high-promise women conductors. They partnered with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra who brought two vital things to the table: a world-class conductor-mentor and a live orchestra.
Last week, that collaboration went on show. Three women each conducted the TSO at a live rehearsal at Roy Thomson Hall, under the tutelage of Maestro Gimeno. It lasted two hours and the 700 of us in the audience were moved in unexpected ways.
The most obvious was to experience just how bloody hard conducting is. No one there thought conductors are superfluous to creating live high-performance, multi-part music. To say they just wave their hands in the air is like saying a surgeon is a high-grade seamstress. The big surprise was how one tiny shift in the conductor’s finger, hand, arm, face, head or body could produce a completely different sound from the orchestra. Gimeno would often stop and start his pupils, get them to repeat phrases in a way that not only changed those bars and phrases, but the entire piece of music, including what it ‘means’ to the listeners. Not just faster or slower, softer or louder, but an entirely different experience.
All three conductors said afterward how important it was to conduct a full orchestra (instead of two grand pianos which is what most masterclasses offer) and, of course, what a thrill it was to have 70 musicians do your bidding in a big concert hall.
Like a law student arguing a case before the Supreme Court or a med student performing open-heart surgery.
You don’t have to be a classical music fan to identify with these unique masterclasses.
It helps if you’re a doctor, or a lawyer, architect, engineer, pilot, accountant, investment banker, that is to say if you work where sustained hard work at the highest level is table-stakes for just doing your job.
You don’t even have to love classical music. (And, by the way, what is this hangup about classical music being inaccessible? It’s just a kind of music, like jazz or blues or rock or…whatever, where you buy a ticket to the concert or the download and….enjoy yourself.)
But only classical music gives the conductor the power to change the meaning of what you’re enjoying on the fly.
Are the women’s conducting masterclasses working? Well, all three women who conducted at Roy Thomson last week have full-time conducting careers: Naomi Woo is assistant conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra; Monica Chen is assistant conductor of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra; and Kelly Lin is artistic director of the Lagom Music Society.
There was a time when all orchestra musicians were men. All orchestras. All men. It took the vaunted Vienna Philharmonic 155 years as an all-male orchestra to admit its first female player in 1997.
There was also a time when all conductors were men. Then Antonia Brico made her conducting debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1930.
But let’s never forget that the Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra began in 1940 and ran for 25 years under the baton of its founder, the 29-year-old Ethel Stark.
The Wikipedia citation for Montreal notes: “An orchestra that was managed by and solely consisted of women was revolutionary at the time since women were believed incapable of enough organisation and stamina to play musical instruments.”
Funny, for years they said that about women doctors, lawyers, and of course, marathoners too.
So what better time than now to change the overwhelming male dominance of auto mechanics (96.5%), welders (95.4%), financial services leaders (95%), truck drivers (94.7%), software developers (80.9%) and architects (75%).
No help needed with marathoners.
In 1967, Kathrine Switzer was the first woman in the world to run a marathon; she entered Boston illegally. This year, of the half million North Americans who will train to run a marathon, 45% are women.
If women can run a 42.2 kilometre footrace, women can raise a 28 gram baton. All they need is training.
Meanwhile…
1. Advice to live by. What to say in real life, life online, and crossing the border.
Also, if you want to topple a regime, read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual. Given to its officers during the Second World War, it advised “talking as frequently as possible and at great length.”
Plus, how to interrogate a Nazi officer; how to get into Harvard; how to survive the sinking of the Titanic; how to vaporize avalanches; how to play “Let it be”; how to talk to someone you’re worried about; how to use ‘fuck’ maximally; and how to store your clothes.
Plus, if you can be in a bad mood for no reason, you can be in a good mood for no reason.
2. Alcohol Kills. I know. It’s hard to come to grips with the truth of that. But the evidence is piling up that even light-to-moderate drinking can pose serious risks. Learn more here. And here.
This just in: alcohol may cause cancer in older adults.
But maybe coffee will catch on someday.
3. The new meaning of porn. It’s shifted from something obscene to “a lot of desirable things viewed in one place.” “Travel porn” means websites groaning with pretty pictures of exotic places made erotic by their consolidation. Now there’s “architecture porn”, “woodworking course porn”, and even “harpsichord porn.” Send us your favourite examples of non-porn porn, and we’ll publish.
Speaking of porn, Howard Hughes simply archived his 164 girlfriends.
4. Discover Canada. I wrote last week about how the University Health Network has a new way to recruit American researchers. They’re not the only Canadians looking for big brains to cross the longest border.
Mike Serbinis wants Ottawa to create a Discovery Visa (zero-cost and a 30-day pathway) to bring the world’s top innovators here to commercialize their discoveries.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s war on science opened on a new front: medical journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet.
5. Young bucks. George Soros’ son Alex is not at all like Logan Roy’s kids. He’s a serious person. Speaking of Succession, what will succeed it? Mountainhead.
Plus how to make the extras in your life the main characters.
Plus the joke of the year.
6. A great Canadian travel company. Opting out of US travel and looking for a Canadian-owned alternative? karibu adventures, founded by Andrea Mandel-Campbell,offers uniquely immersive experiences in Canada and internationally. We’ve been on two karibu trips and can’t speak highly enough of them. karibu is offering a “friends of Bob” special on their upcoming kayaking tour off North Vancouver Island, running July 28 – Aug 3. Use promo code “Ramsay” and get 15% off. It’s a superlative trip and ranks as one of our peak travel experiences.
7. The special relationship. Not ours with America, but Britain’s. The White Housewebsite is on steroids.
Plus, how to get politicians to say something interesting. And how road signs are driving politics.
8. Going for the openings. Olivia Chow opens Hot Docs. And Hot Docs re-opens.
Older sister opens up to her younger one. You open up to a new relationship. Steve Paikin closes one door, opens others. Hollywood opens out west, not down south. A giant octopusdies so others may live. Britons say “no” to “Your call is important to us.”
9. We’re seeing more autism. And it’s mostly genetic. Plus how 3D bioprinting createshuman tissue on demand. Plus funny arguments for vaccinations.
When it comes to organ donations, this former MP is getting organized.
And even Nobel-Prize-winners get it wrong.
10. Big long thinking. I know we used to read big ideas like this in things called books. Today, it’s the long-form essay. Here are some timely ones: Timothy Snyder, who moved from Yale to the Munk School at U of T this year, writes about the next terrorist attack.
Plus, Toronto City Hall moves, finally, from indifference to excellence in designs for public spaces.
Plus Christopher Hitchens on free speech, and 50 things you can learn about construction physics, plus the big jock who’s an even bigger brain. Finally, when does ping pong becomelong pong?
11. What I’m about to like. I’m a huge Will Dalrymple groupie, and he’s coming to Toronto next week. I first fell across the dazzling British historian and co-host of the Empire podcast, when he spoke at a festival in Greece in 2023. He speaks here on May 6about his big new book, The Golden Road, a sweeping history of South Asia’s profound influence on the world, at the Toronto International Festival of Authors. Tickets are just $15 here.