3 Practical considerations
As you start work on diversifying your programming, there are a number of practical considerations which it can be useful to bear in mind. These can be a bit different to what you’d usually be thinking about when preparing a programme of all-male composers.
Funding
Although you’ll be used to applying for funding regularly, you might want to consider any additional support which you could apply for to programme women’s work. You will also need to think through any additional costs which you might have, such as hiring fees for parts, the costs associated with preparing a new edition, or extra rehearsal fees.
Some potential organisations which you could consider applying to are the various Arts Councils across the UK and Ireland (depending on where you are based): Arts Council England, Arts Council of Wales, Creative Scotland, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, or The Arts Council (ROI). The Association of British Orchestras (ABO) administers the Sirens Fund, which awards grants to support the performance of historical women composers. Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy also awards grants to support the programming of orchestral work by women in the US and internationally.
You might also want to consider signing up to Donne Women in Music’s mailing list, as their regular newsletter often includes details of funding to support the performance of women’s music. Additionally, the ISM maintains a good list of funding opportunities available to composers and performers.
Audience engagement
One of the principal reasons people often give for feeling reluctant to programme women’s music is that they are concerned that audiences will be unfamiliar with the works, and that this will affect ticket sales. There are steps that you can take, however, to help build audiences for this music.
You could commission a music researcher with a specialist interest in the particular composer whose work you are performing to write some programme notes or even consider tasking them to write a longer piece, which you could host on your website. You can find music researchers by using a search engine to search for people working on the composer which you will be performing. Many music researchers have active online presences. You could also consider hiring a researcher to deliver a pre-concert talk or even (if you have sufficient funding) to do some outreach or educational work with local schools and/or community groups interested in classical music.
Getting performers on board
Sometimes performers can initially be a bit reluctant to programme music by women, if they are unfamiliar with the music. This is often due to the time necessary to learn the new repertoire and the additional rehearsal time. The work can be challenging and take a lot of time to master. You need to think about incentivising this. For example, by offering some additional paid preparation time. An advantage, once the repertoire is learned, is that the performers will then have mastered new and unusual repertoire, which might help them to specialise and be able to offer different, less commonly heard, works within a competitive industry.