4 Towards gender balanced programming

LAURA HAMER

Welcome, Stephan. Thank you for joining us today. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and about Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, BCMG?

STEPHAN MEIER

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group has been founded in ’87, with a very simple sounding aim of performing music for the first time. It has been founded by musicians from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and I’m the current artistic director since 10 years or so. I’m myself a musician and conductor.

LAURA HAMER

Could you tell us a little bit about BCMG’s work championing contemporary women composers?

STEPHAN MEIER

Our core mission, obviously, is to create exciting musical experiences and, therefore, find the best music, which is recently or composed in the future. And some of this best music is written by female composers. So of course, this is our task to find the right balance and a balance that hasn’t always in the history of contemporary music been reached. And that’s a joy. We have a couple of options how to do this, like in programming pieces, like spotting existing pieces which, for example, have not been performed in the UK or not in Birmingham or not in their entirety, and so on and so on, or deserve a second performance for whatever reasons. And, of course, commissioning is another preferred measure. That’s, of course, one of the most exciting things as well for everybody involved, for the musicians, for the composer, and for the audiences. And there are lots of other actually, areas thinking of our learning work, thinking of some background information we produce to kind of make sense of it and embed it. Before someone turns out to be a great composer, let alone a musical genius, of course, there must be some sort of bringing people in contact. And we like the idea that it’s a good strategy to bring as many people in touch with music at an early age as possible. To find out. Children who have this knack, who have this affinity, like who-- they have that. They want to articulate ideas in their head, like with sounds. And so perhaps not even aware they have a talent to compose. They have the opportunity of inventing music, of creating music. And, of course, that’s an important part of our learning work.

LAURA HAMER

Could you tell us a bit more about BCMG’s approach to commissioning new works and working with new composers?

STEPHAN MEIER

Looking for the best contemporary music is a good strategy to try to make sense of it, try to create some meaningful experience for this triangle of musicians, composer, and audiences we create. These are the three core elements we bring together. Musicians who must be on there, like ahead of their of their game and good experience in avant garde technique and performance practices. The composers, who mostly, is very useful if they also are ahead of the game and well informed with all the other composers before them have done. And the audiences, who interestingly, play a big part in this. Because without audiences there’s no music full stop. So while, of course, the composer needs to come up with the new ideas and adding elements in it, for our task to create something meaningful is good to have all three elements in focus when planning events, when approaching composers, when discussing what would be the line up a composer would like to write for, what sort of event you like, the music to be presented in, and so on and so on. And then further, of course, it comes to the practicalities of it. So, of course, it’s helpful to have a little strategy lined out, as you need a timetable stretching two to five years ahead. We had some, actually, very good experiences with open calls. And also, we sometimes we’ve done them anonymously. And then there was actually, quite interesting and very useful for gender balance. There has been debates whether it’s good or bad, but we made really good experiences with this. Of course, it makes sense to have the panel gender-balanced.

LAURA HAMER

Thank you very much for sharing that. It’s all extremely interesting. So one last question, and that is, could you tell us about how BCMG is working towards gender-balanced programming?

STEPHAN MEIER

So, of course, in the care you apply to the strategic aspects of commissioning activity, you have this in mind, that of course, you want to contribute to the gender balance question in a meaningful way. If you imagine things, sometimes they happen. Various little steps become second nature.

LAURA HAMER

Thank you. Thank you very much, Stephan, for sharing all of that and for speaking with us today.