Why aren’t Australia’s female composers being heard?

New music by female composers is being sidelined in professional Australian concert programs.

Since 1987, 47 composers have been commissioned to write for the Australia Ensemble – the nation’s leading chamber music ensemble. Forty one of them were men.

Meanwhile, the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music featured only 10 women among the 63 composers in its 2015 program.

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Sally Macarthur, Cat Hope and Dawn Bennett
About the Author
Sally Macarthur, Senior Lecturer in Musicology, Western Sydney University Cat Hope, Associate Dean (Research) Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University Dawn Bennett, Professor of Higher Education, Curtin University