The Dallas Morning News highlights Gemma New for her groundbreaking role at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Gemma New serves as the first female Principal Guest Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (Photo credit: Anthony Chang)
Dallas Symphony Orchestra named Gemma New as their first female principal guest conductor in 2018
By Tim Diovanni
The Dallas Morning News
October 28, 2020
Shortly after earning the position of second horn at the Dallas Symphony in 1999, Haley Hoops was told by a male orchestral manager “to sit there and play second horn and keep my mouth shut.”
The DSO has since changed for the better, Hoops thinks, and she believes Kim Noltemy — the orchestra’s president and CEO since January 2018 — has been instrumental in creating that change. “Having Kim embrace that women can say something has been really just a relief,” she says.
But challenges and obstacles remain for women in the field. They’re still underrepresented in orchestras and opera companies as conductors and programmed composers.
The DSO’s second annual Women in Classical Music Symposium will explore these issues Nov. 8-11 online and at the Meyerson Symphony Center. In total, between 200 and 250 participants are expected to attend virtually and in person.
Leading into the symposium are “Female Pioneer” concerts featuring violinist Hilary Hahn and conductor Marin Alsop. Hahn began a yearlong sabbatical in September 2019, and she didn’t solo in any live performances in September and October 2020 because of the pandemic, so the DSO concerts will be her first in over a year.
“I am wildly excited about the idea of performing again. I am also aware that it’s a new set of circumstances,” she says, referring to social distancing in the audience and orchestra and mandatory masking. At the symposium, Hahn also will be receiving an Award of Excellence from the DSO. The first one was given last year to soprano Dawn Upshaw.
Locally, the DSO’s program builds off the success of the Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute, which has been advancing the careers of female conductors since 2015. This year’s institute has been postponed to February 2021 and will take place entirely online.
During the DSO symposium, mostly female musicians and administrators will participate in roundtables, panel discussions and workshops covering topics including performance anxiety and career paths.
Panelists and moderators will come from outside as well as inside the orchestra world. There will also be a speed-dating session with possible mentors and one-on-one business counseling from a lawyer.
“Last year we were talking about the pathways for women to have different jobs in the orchestral business,” Noltemy says. “Clearly there are a lot of women working in orchestras, but they don’t necessarily make it to the top couple of positions.”
“This year we’re moving into what are the things that potentially make it more difficult for women to have these positions,” she says. “So things like child care, elder care, women who have primary family responsibilities in their household.”
Hahn doesn’t want these conversations to be limited to women.
“I’m hoping that there are men who will attend the symposium, too,” she says. “Because I think all of these issues … should be considered by men and should be part of men’s discussions about how they manage their work-life balance, as well.”
This year’s symposium will place more of an emphasis on musicians. To this end, hornist Hoops — currently the only woman in the DSO’s brass section — has curated a Nov. 9 chamber music concert involving members of the DSO. To highlight a younger brass player, she also invited Jaclyn Rainey, principal horn of the Atlanta Symphony.
“I thought that would be interesting for the people going to the symposium — to see not only the people who have been doing it as long as I have, but the people who are just now starting,” Hoops says.
Alongside pieces including Jessie Montgomery’s Strum and Beethoven’s Sextet for Horns and String Quartet will be a newly commissioned work for clarinet, horn and piano by American composer Stacy Garrop. Called Slipstream, it’s inspired by cycling; Hoops and DSO second clarinetist Stephen Ahearn, who’ll premiere it with DSO pianist Gabriel Sanchez, are both cyclists.
Building Equality
Musicians in American orchestras are now generally balanced between the sexes, largely because blind auditions — during which candidates play behind screens — were introduced in the 1970s and 1980s.
But stereotypes surrounding which instruments women should play remain. Most harpists are women; brass sections are dominated by men.
In recent decades, the DSO has supported several female conductors, with associates and assistants including Kate Tamarkin, Rei Hotoda, Karina Canellakis, Ruth Reinhardt and Katharina Wincor. In 2018 Gemma New became its first female principal guest conductor. The Dallas Opera named Nicole Paiement its principal guest conductor in 2014.
Still, female conductors are the minority, particularly in directorship positions. Marin Alsop, chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the only female music director of a major American orchestra since joining the Baltimore Symphony in 2007, has thought a lot about this problem.
“We’re headed in the right direction,” Alsop says. “I don’t think we were say 5, 10 years ago.
“I think we need to support each other as women, as minorities in the field,” she says. "It’s all about creating a passion and a love for the art form. We as an industry haven’t done a great job with that, with making it accessible to everyone.
“We have a chance right now — especially coming out of this time, this pandemic — to reassess and really reinvent ourselves. And I think having women and underrepresented people in leadership roles is a big part of that new landscape.”
Progress has already been made in administration. These days, according to a report by the League of American Orchestras, top executives in orchestras are roughly divided between the sexes. There are currently female CEOs at big-budget symphony orchestras in Atlanta, New York, Minnesota and Pittsburgh, in addition to Dallas.
“It’s a sea change from when I first started in the business,” says Deborah Borda, who became president and CEO of the New York Philharmonic in September 2017 after 17 years in the same role at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She’ll be receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the symposium.
“When we think about the symphony orchestra, in many ways it is a microcosm of society. And as you look at the gains that women have made in terms of being elected to public office, having professional careers such as doctors and lawyers, there have been exponential increases.”
It’s impossible to predict when or if the gender gaps in the field will be fixed. But one thing’s for certain. Dallas continues to pave the way in shaping classical music’s future.
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