I found this article on the definition of a conductor on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra site. It's from The NPR® Classical Music Companion: Terms and Concepts from A to Z by Miles Hoffman. Pretty interesting, I thought. Although the talk about how a conductor's job is "lead a multi-level seduction" was a bit odd.
I was a little annoyed, though, that they started off referring to the conductor with "his or her" and after doing it once abandoned it halfway through and stuck to the male pronoun. Kind of sends the message, "Well, we were trying to be polite, but it's just so much work, and we all know conductors are mostly male anyways." I think my response to that is similar to Bill the Cat's.
Refuting that idea, over in the UK a woman named Sue Perkins won a reality show about conducting called Maestro.
Having a woman conducting something in the media spotlight highlights the lack of women conducting in the media spotlight. That means it's time for more media articles wondering where all the women conductors are, coming up with no satisfactory answers, and concluding that we'll just have to sit around and wait for society to get less sexist before they appear! Yeah, that'll work. Because so far, we just don't know any women conductors. Hm. Anyone see any? *peers around*
I know! Maybe articles like Playboy's The Sexiest Babes of Classical Music will help bring respect and prestige to female artists. Or not...
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