More Gender Stats: Eclat Festival, Zuricher Tage fuer Neue Musik , Ensemble Modern

IAWM List, December 20, 2006

The Eclat New Music Festival will be held in Stuttgart , Germany from
February 1-4.

Seven concerts including 27 composers will be presented (if my quick count
is correct.)  None of the works are by women.

27 to 0.

You can see the festival program here.

http://www.eclat.org/index.cfm?id=2793

Perhaps you will remember that the ratio for the Zurich New Music Festival
held in November was 24 to 0.

Last November Germany 's Ensemble Modern (its premiere full-time new music ensemble) presented a festival of new music in Cologne entilted "Tempo Tempo."  Twenty-eight compositions were performed in six concerts spread over three days.  The m/f ratio for the compositions was 28 to 0.  Not a single woman composer was included.

This is yet another example of how tokenism doesn't even matter in Germany .

It also illustrates why German women need a discussion list for music.  Through a list, they could generate a lot of buzz about situations as ridiculous as this.  Word would quickly get around and put pressure on the Ensemble Modern to live up to their name and enter the 21st century.  Or perhaps they should just change their name to "Ensemble Reactionary" -- or maybe "Ensemble Backward."

These festivals and ensemble apparently do not even care to include a token woman.

William Osborne
www.osborne-conant.org