2022 Orchestral Seasons Stats

Breaking down orchestra seasons into stats is something many researchers and organisations have been doing over the years. It is particularly useful for tracking cultural trends and gender diversity. Organisations who have done break downs in the past include: Institute for Composer Diversity, Donne UK, and specifically Australia: Living Music Report. Hannah began doing her own unofficial tally back in 2018 but hadn’t had a chance to share the results. For 2022 over on her “WomenComposersProject” Instagram, she’s been breaking down the 2022 Season for Australia’s orchestras. Here’s some of the brief break downs of each orchestra, followed by some comparisons. The 8 Orchestras included are:

• Adelaide Symphony Orchestra

• Australian Chamber Orchestra

• Canberra Symphony Orchestra

• Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

• Queensland Symphony Orchestra

• Sydney Symphony Orchestra

• Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra

• West Australian Symphony Orchestra

A couple of clarifications:

We left out all duplicated programs – either morning concerts, multiple concerts for the same program, or the same program at different venues. We left out all kids concerts/family concerts, particularly ones that had no specific programs listed.

Key figures:

Out of the 591 works planned for 2022 by Australia’s Major Orchestras:

• 14.5% of works were written by women composers – 86 works total

• 23% of works were written by living composers – 140 works total

• 15.4% of works were written by Australian composers – 91 works total

• 3.9% of works were written by BIPOC composers – 23 works total

• 6.8% of works were written by Beethoven – 40 works total

• 5.1% of works were written by Mozart – 30 works total

• Beethoven, Mozart, and R. Strauss featured more times than all women composers combined.

• There were double the amount of composers named Richard than were First nations composers.

Below is the break down for each orchestra

West Australian Symphony Orchestra

We hoped to see things improve from the last few seasons, there’s double the amount works by women programmed for 2022 compared to 2021…but that’s still only 4 works.
No historical women composers programmed.
No First Nations*
There’s 1 POC but that’s a passing mention of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in a kids show not a programmed main stage work.
There’s also a lack of Australian works.
There are 4 world premieres which is the only place you’ll find some gender parity.

We had hoped to see better…

*Deborah Cheetham’s Eumerella has been rescheduled for the second season due to the pandemic, and has not been counted in these numbers.

These numbers also only include Main stage concerts (Not morning symphonies) and not multiple performances

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Vast improvement here from WASO, with many main stage programs including works by women. We were excited to see Sally Beamish and Elena Kats-Chernin programmed alongside Bach, this seemed like well-considered and thoughtful programming of works which is what we love to see. Gender parity is a long way off but MSO are leading the way in many ways.

*no duplicate programs, mornings concerts or kids concerts were included in these stats

Sydney Symphony Orchestra

When we read the limelight review we were excited as we’d read about all the commissions and how many of those were by women…those numbers didn’t improve the rest of the stats. All but one of the works by women were for the Fifty Fanfares commissions.

Disappointed doesn’t cut it, and further proves Australia has a problem programming works by Aussies 🤦🏻‍♀️

Canberra Symphony Orchestra

We are impressed with their First Nations engagement and general use of Australian composers overall.
Over 40% of works programmed are by Australians. Far better than all the orchestras seasons we’ve looked at so far!

And just under a quarter of works programmed are written by women. CSO are leading the way on many respects.

Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra

They’ve only released half their program. And while we were hopeful considering they had the amazing Holly Harrison as their composer in residence, this program not only has barely any works by women programmed, the majority of the program is dead composers.

At least the 3 works by living composers are by Australian composers, 2 of which are new commissions

Can’t say we’re surprised, but ever so disappointed

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

No First Nations engagement, No POC, only a small amount of Australian works. 7 works by women which compared to WASO and TSO looks like a good thing, but compared to MSO and ASO, they could definitely do better. This surprises us as we thought QSO had had some interesting programming for the last few years but 2022 is looking a little stale 😤

*no family concerts or morning masterworks concerts included

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Now with the name Australian in the title you’d hope that they’d have lots of Australian representation. Wrong. They’ve programmed 1/45 🤦🏻‍♀️

90% of the pieces in their program are works written by dead men and 31.1% are just dead German men. We’d hoped to see better from ACO, they do at least have a crumb of representation by programming 3 works by POC, but that does feel like we’re scraping the barrel for bright sides 😅

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra

ASO have by far the most gender diversity in their program. This is mostly due to the excellent programming for their “She Speaks” weekend, 7 events all with the focus on women composers - past, present, and future. In 2021, “She Speaks” was a day curated by Anne Cawrse. And for their 2022 season it’s been co-curated by Cawrse and pianist and writer Anna Goldsworthy. We really hope to get to Adelaide next July because these 7 events look fantastic. Historical composers, Australian composers and emerging composers - honestly if we don't make it we're going to be very sad.

However, what makes their program even better, is that the works by women aren’t contained only in this weekend. They have a few concerts where works by women have been included, which is really refreshing to see. Often when orchestras do some sort of IWD concert or a dedicated Women’s concert, that’s where the representation ends, but for ASO in 2022 that doesn’t appear to be the case. They've even managed to shake up the 'Last Night of the Proms' concert with some Smyth and Glanville-Hicks!!

They also have great Australian representation BUT minimal First Nations engagement past Brenda Gifford (love to see it, but we’d love to see more).

We were pleasantly surprised with this one, are there improvements to be made? Sure. But For 2022, ASO has programmed almost as many works by women (32) as WASO, SSO, QSO, TSO
and CSO combined (35!)

Nice one ASO!

So how do they compare?

Men vs Women Composers

Living Vs Dead Composers

Australian Vs Non-Australian

It seems MSO, ASO, and CSO are leading the way with diversifying their programming. Let’s hope the rest of the orchestras follow suit and start taking note.

We hope for 2023 to see an increase in these numbers, especially when it comes to BIPOC composers. We’d love to see an increase in the number of Australian works being performed as well, it seems that Australia spends a lot of it’s time performing works by Dead European Men, and while the classical music world is rife with their works, we know there is a WEALTH of Australian works waiting to be performed. Can’t change the canon if you keep playing Beethoven!

If you’d like to discuss any of these statistics or if you have any thing you’d like to discuss with us email us at info@tenthmuseinitiative.com.au