I’m slightly wary of radio stations that pull out all the stops to celebrate women on International Women’s Day and then don’t do much for the rest of the year. A day of fanfare and then back in your box, love.
One of Scala Radio’s main aims is to demonstrate that classical music is for everyone, regardless of gender, class or background, and we’re keen to promote women classical composers and artists across the year. In a way, International Women’s Day and the month of March, Women’s History Month, have become useful moments for us to check in and re-evaluate our ambitions, and to ask ourselves whether we’re doing enough.
This year, as in 2022, we’re devoting the whole day to women composers, conductors and soloists from 9am to 10pm. In a first for 2023, we’ll feature some guest curators including the world-class conductor – and Scala Radio Residency presenter – Marin Alsop who will pick an hour’s worth of recordings starring her favourite women conductors at 4pm.
Seeing as International Women’s Day 2023 falls on a Wednesday, which is our ‘Scala Sessions’ day, Sam Hughes will welcome not one but two brilliant musicians to perform live for the Scala audience: top trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth and cellist Dobrawa Chocher.
Elsewhere across the day, there’ll be the chance to hear parts of the Abbey Road Equalise panel ‘Scoring for Film and TV’, which I was thrilled to host on Saturday 4th March, chatting to composers Jocelyn Pook, Natalie Holt and Oleta Haffner.
2023 is also the third year of She Scores, a Sunday evening series in which women composers of screen music curate and host a show, sharing their musical influences. We’ve been so lucky to welcome some supremely talented and inspiring composers to Scala: in series 1, the hosts were Pinar Toprak, Isobel Waller-Bridge, Jessica Curry and Nainita Desai. Last year, we handed over the airwaves to Rachel Portman, Germaine Franco, Lisa Gerrard and Laura Karpman.
This year’s series of She Scores, in partnership with Girls on Film, is presented by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch (Living, Censor, Only You), Jocelyn Pook (Eyes Wide Shut, Brick Lane, The Wife), Amelia Warner (Mary Shelley, Wild Mountain Thyme, Mr Malcolm’s List) and Natalie Holt (Loki, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Journey’s End). Each episode is a personal musical journey, often filled with a surprising mix of classical works, scores and other musical genres, and it’s wonderful to get an insight into the composer’s soundworld.
It’s also been wonderful working with the Scala programming team on these projects. I’ve taken a bit of a step back from previous years and have enjoyed overseeing the production of She Scores and the organisation of International Women’s Day itself, which have been carried out by the extremely hard-working Alice Millar, Ella Lee and Lissie Day. Shout out also to our Head of Music, Jo Wilson, who continues to showcase women composers across the schedule and on our online radio station devoted to classical music composed by women, available as part of our subscription service Scala Radio Premium.
So in a nutshell, International Women’s Day is an opportunity for celebration but not self-congratulation. If you’d like to suggest ideas for additional activity to promote and inspire women composers, please get in touch. There’s always more to be done!
