FEATURE:
Adagio and Strings
IN THIS PHOTO: Hannah Peel/PHOTO CREDIT: Phil Sharp
Saluting The F-List’s New President, Hannah Peel, and Gender Inequality in Film and Classical Composition
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WITHIN all the bad and horrific news…
IN THIS PHOTO: Hannah Peel was among the winners at the Music Producers Guild Awards 2023
from the past few weeks, there has been some good news in music. Moments, announcements and stuff that gives hope and some happiness! One occurred earlier this week. Hannah Peel is an esteemed and accomplished composer. She composed the score for The Midwich Cuckoos (2022). She has also released brilliant solo albums like Fir Wave (2021). Check out Peel’s episodes of Night Tracks. She is someone I hope gets another regular show on BBC Radio 3 or Scala Radio - where she can explore new Classical composers, films scores and other areas of Electronic and Classical music. Someone I can see doing a show on BBC Radio 6 Music or BBC Radio 4. I admire her work greatly! She is in a field that is quite imbalanced. In terms of female composers in the U.K. and Europe, there is an imbalance and lack of visibility when it comes to women. I will come to that. The good news that came this week is that Hannah Peel has been announced as the new President of The F-List. It was created by Vick Bain. She is an advocate and campaigner for equality and diversity in the music industry. Follow The F-List on Instagram, Twitter and their official site. Music Week were among those to highlight the news of Peel’s new role – and the vital and ongoing work that The F-List does:
“The F-List For Music has named musician and composer Hannah Peel as its president.
Peel takes over from classical composer Professor Shirley J Thompson, who was herself preceded by Brix Smith and Anoushka Shankar.
The presidential role is an honorary role for high-profile musicians to build support and awareness for the work of The F-List For Music.
The F-List For Music was set up during the pandemic as a support network for women and non-binary musicians. It is the only nationwide organisation supporting women and gender-diverse musicians across all genres of music in the UK.
Hannah Peel is a Northern Irish artist, composer, producer and radio presenter. Her solo record career includes the shortlisted 2021 Mercury Music Prize album Fir Wave, as well as Awake But Always Dreaming and the space-themed Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia, scored for synthesisers and a 30-piece colliery brass band
Hannah Peel won the Best Television Soundtrack category in the Ivor Novello Awards for The Midwich Cuckoos. She was Emmy-nominated for the score for Game Of Thrones: The Last Watch, while her soundtrack for TV thriller The Deceived won a 2022 Royal Television Society NI award and the Music Producer’s Guild’s best Original Score Recording.
A regular collaborator with Paul Weller, she contributed arrangements to his No.1 albums On Sunset and Fat Pop. Last year she released The Unfolding with Paraorchestra, the world's only disabled and non-disabled integrated orchestra which went to No.1 in the UK classical charts.
Hannah Peel said: “I am extremely passionate about the work that The F-list carries out, and how essential it is for our UK music industry. It is not an easy industry to navigate and there is no secret formula to ‘success’, however, knowing that there is a talented and dedicated community, not only collating our talents and skills, but helping make connections and shouting about our assets to the world is vitally important!”
Peel added: “There are now more female higher-profile players leading us as role models than ever before, but shocking statistics are still showing a major disparity between the gender gap in music. Highlighting those musicians behind the scenes, who also produce, engineer, orchestrate, conduct… The F-List continues to positively build upon and endorse a supportive place that reflects our rich diversity. It is an honour to represent this wealth of British talent.”
The F-List For Music helps UK women and gender diverse musicians overcome structural barriers and sustain their music careers for longer.
Since forming three years ago, the not-for-profit organisation has organised online events for more than 500 participants, taken 28 women through their flagship ‘Culture of Belonging’ producer training programme at Miloco Studios, formed partnerships with industry organisations and worked with numerous events and festivals helping them source diverse talent, such as Under the Stars, Primadonna and Out and Wild.
The social enterprise also gives visibility to underrepresented talent through their website, playlists and social media channels, and by running the online directory – an ever-expanding community with over 6,000 musicians, songwriters and composers”.
IN THIS PHOTO: The F-List’s Founder, Vick Bain
Before coming to subjects around gender inequality among composers and orchestras, I want to stay specifically with Hannah Peel. The F-List’s Founder Vick Bain discussed with me ways in which The F-List are striving towards change and making incredible female talent more visible for festival bookers. She also reacted to Hannah Peel’s appointment as President and why she is a perfect fit for The F-List. It has been great getting an interesting and passionate insight from someone who has worked tirelessly to raise awareness and help highlight incredible women through the music industry:
Hey Vick. Congratulations on all the amazing work The F-List continues to do! Did you think, when you founded it, it would grow into what it has today?
A combination of yes and no. I founded The F-List in the midst of the pandemic when I wasn’t sure what our future would look like at all, but I just knew something special could happen with this idea. And here we are three years later, ploughing on, slowly growing our financial stability and we have helped hundreds of women and gender diverse musicians over the years and that is what I am most proud of.
“Not only is Hannah an incredible music talent. She really cares what the industry is like for other women”
Your new President is the wonderful Hannah Peel. Obviously you admire her music and composition talent, but what was it that about her that made her the perfect choice to become President of The F-List?
Not only is Hannah an incredible music talent. She really cares what the industry is like for other women. Not every artist at that level has the time, or makes the time, to give back when they are at the top of their game, which is such a huge shame. I have been exceptionally humbled by all of our Presidents who have helped us so far. They have all been generous, and Hannah follows on from Anoushka Shankar, Brix Smith and Professor Shirley J. Thompson as a brilliant role model.
What qualities and unique perspectives and skills do you think Hannah will bring to the role?
She works in an exceptionally male-dominated field, which is that of screen (film, tv and games) composing. Our previous Presidents have represented genres spanning across the industry. One of the unique things about The F-List is it is multi-genre, so we have over six thousand musicians and groups listed in the directory from ALL genres. Because I have always been of the belief musicians are musicians and face similar challenges in their careers, so it is great to have someone so high profile from screen composing.
Even though festival bills and radio playlists are slowly moving in the right direction, there is still a way to go. How do you feel when you look at them each year? Do you feel enough is being done to create balance and equality?
It’s a very mixed picture. Some festivals are slaying it, especially a lot of grassroots festivals and definitely the ones we partner with on our Doing The Right Thing network, but certain genres still show a lack of imagination and ambition. Rock is one of these and yet there are many hundreds of women on The F-List who have tagged themselves with ‘rock’ and ‘metal’ (and therefore have expertise in these genres) who could be booked, as well as other organisations such as Loud Women, who put on brilliant live shows. We can act as the talent development pipeline to the bigger rock festivals and onto headlining these stages; there just has to be a drive from the top to make it happen. But we just need to look across the water to Primavera in Spain to see a festival which is doing it exactly right.
“And it just blows my mind they are not all being booked, signed, and snapped up by the industry in greater numbers”
It seems, to me, that women are creating the best and most original music, yet it is not being reflected in opportunities and exposure. Would you agree with that statement?
100% this!!!!! I listen to new music every single day by women and gender diverse musicians who create Listings on our directory and upload their music… incredible and talented musicians. And it just blows my mind they are not all being booked, signed, and snapped up by the industry in greater numbers. I highly recommend to all of your readers: do a search through the directory and listen! So many fabulous musicians.
There are a lot of challenges and areas for improvement throughout the industry when it comes to equality. What are some of the biggest music faces in 2024 and how achievable do you think they are?
We at The F-List have been formally participating in the Misogyny in Music government inquiry this past 18 months, and during the course of my PhD (I am researching women’s careers in music), I’ve heard dozens of women and gender non-conforming people speaking about the blatant sexism, discrimination, and harassment they have experienced during the course of their careers - both in business as well as creative roles. We have a lot of work to do, as a society and within our industry, to ensure women are afforded the same levels of respect, support, and reward as our male-counterparts. Government needs to strengthen equality legislation; music companies need to address their own statistics, and every individual in the industry needs to see what positive changes they can make too. So it’s multi-level and it’s going to be a continuous process over the course of our lifetimes! This is not an easy fix that can be ‘done’ this year I am afraid. But I set up The F-List in a wave of optimism, determination, and belief that together we can make change. So I am hopeful we are on the right track”.
I want to lead with a new report that highlights a gender divide in the European film industry. It highlights, among other things, how things are quite stark regarding film composers. It is important that we discover more about the statistics and situation:
“The European Audiovisual Observatory has published a new report on female professionals active in the European film industry, which states that only 26% of directors of European feature films are women. The gender gap was more pronounced among cinematographers and composers, where women only represented 11% and 10% of the workforce, respectively. In turn, the female share was higher among producers (35%) and screenwriters (29%).
This report – Female Professionals in European Film Production 2023 edition – provides an overview of the gender disparity among film professionals working in the European film industry.
The report considers the origin of film works, rather than the nationality of directors. A film was of European origin when produced and majority-financed by a European country. For this analysis, the 46 member states of the Council of Europe are considered European countries.
The report’s scope includes seven professional categories: directors, screenwriters, producers, cinematographers, composers, editors and lead roles.
It found that women accounted for 26% of all directors of European feature films active between 2018 and 2022. On average, women helmed fewer films than men and they were less likely to be the sole directors of feature films than their male counterparts. For these reasons, the average share of female directors per film was 23%, a figure which is lower than the share of women among all active directors in the workforce in the same time period.
In the same period, female directors in the sample were involved, whether alone or in partnership with other colleagues, in the direction of 26% of European feature films. However, the share of films directed by female-driven* teams was only 21% – because when women co-directed a film, it was in most cases in collaboration with a male colleague. 15
The share of women among directors varied across film genres. The female share was higher among directors of documentaries (31% between 2018 and 2022) than for live-action fiction (21%) and animation films (20%).
Comparatively, the level of activity for female directors was slightly lower than for their male counterparts. The majority (74%) of filmmakers in the sample, all genders considered, only directed a single film between 2013 and 2022. However, female directors were comparatively less prolific than males: only 22% of women in the sample directed more than one film between 2013 and 2022, compared to 28% for men.
When looking at the proportion of women and men among the total number of directors of each feature film, the average share of female directors per film was 23% between 2018 and 2022. This share has only marginally increased over the last decade.
PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels
Other findings include:
Women represented 29% of screenwriters of European feature films produced between 2018 and 2022.
Among behind-the-camera roles, the highest female presence was registered among producers (35%) and screenwriters (29%).
The gender gap was most visible concerning cinematographers and composers, as women represent 11% and 10% of active professionals respectively.
The share of female professionals is progressing slowly, with variations across Europe.
On average, female professionals in film crews worked on slightly fewer films than their male counterparts, except for film editors.
Women in key crew positions were more likely than their male colleagues to work in teams, as well as in gender-mixed settings.
Documentary was the film genre with the highest share of female professionals, taking into consideration all crew roles.
Data suggest a positive correlation between the presence of at least one female co-director and an increase in the share of women working in film crews”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Composer Joanna Ward
I think that Hannah Peel, as President of The F-List, will address the situation and help highlight women in film composition. Make a space for female composers coming through. Help to address the climate and why there is an imbalance at the moment. She appeared on BBC’s Woman’s Hour (from about 49:40) with fellow composer Bishi. I am going to focus on Hannah Peel and why she is a perfect President for The F-List. I want look at a few feature throughout the years that asks why there is gender inequality when it comes to composers. The Guardian had some theories in a 2019 feature:
“One of the many arguments posed against gender balance (not only in music) is about the consistently lower percentage of applications from women in any competitive application process. More girls than boys are now taking GCSE music, but at some point between this and a professional career, many women drop off, lose heart and stop putting themselves forwards altogether.
Why? At what point are composers who happen to be women discouraged, and by who or what? What are the barriers to becoming a professional composer and do these affect one gender more than another?
Many of the answers to these questions, of course, are about wider society: about how women are portrayed in the media, about the weight of childcare and domestic arrangements disproportionately borne by women, about women being conditioned so often from a young age to “be nice”, “stop showing off”, leaving an embedded belief that shame, chastisement or punishment would follow any bold foray.
This plays out in the world of music in many different ways. Some are more obvious, such as the young black composer who was told that she “didn’t look like a composer” in her first year at conservatoire, or the established figure told that she couldn’t have written her large orchestral piece “without help”.
However, there is a more subtle edge to how composers who are women are treated. I’ve been talking recently to the brilliant young composer Joanna Ward, who has been researching gender equality in the field of composers. Part of her research has been to look at the programming of the BBC Proms 2013-18. The number of women being commissioned and programmed by the Proms is improving. However, her research reveals that women take up disproportionately less time in the programme. The average duration of a woman’s piece was 12 minutes, compared to 25 minutes for those by men. Even among world premieres (in other words, the Proms’ own commissions), the average duration of a world premiere by a woman was 11 minutes and the average duration of a world premiere by a man was 19 minutes.
In some ways it is unfair to single out the Proms. Their commitment to gender equality in commissioning is laudable, and their data is more readily available than that of many others. (I suspect other series and festivals would be no better and in many cases much worse.) And what the data doesn’t tell you is how this striking disparity has arisen. Are men being commissioned to write longer pieces? Are women more likely to compose shorter pieces? If so, why?
But it is a stark illustration that if you are an aspiring female composer, you will be looking at a future where, even if youcan avoid overtly sexist comments and behaviour, it seems likely that you will be allowed to take up less space than your male colleagues”.
This 2021 feature from Classic FM revealed how women are responsible for only five percent of the pieces scheduled in Classical music concerts today. Why, in 2023, is there still an issue with regards gender and highlighting great female composers?! I shall come to that too. In 2020, GRAMMY spoke with the GRAMMY-winning Classical composer, Jennifer Higdon. She discussed how to succeed as a woman in this male-dominated industry:
“This year’s GRAMMY-winning composer Jennifer Higdon faced her fair share of challenges early on in her career. Getting her start at age 15 when she taught herself to play the flute, it took years before Higdon developed her striking rhythmic, neo-romantic style, and more than a decade before she would be taken seriously by the classical community. But several concertos, an opera and three GRAMMYs later, Higdon’s list of accomplishments is as long as it is rich, even marveling fans as recently as two weeks ago when the Library of Congress announced that Higdon’s GRAMMY-winning Percussion Concerto has been inducted into the National Recording Registry. Higdon, who is currently practicing social distancing at her home in Philadelphia while she works on her upcoming opera Woman With Eyes Closed, took a break to share a few lessons with us about how she arrived at this level of success, how she remains proactive, and how other women can follow in her footsteps.
IN THIS PHOTO: Composer and orchestrator Dani Howard
Program Directors are out there looking
When asked about what improvements are still needed in the classical community, Higdon replied, "I want to see more women on programs." And Higdon makes a strong point, given that only 1.8 percent of music performed by the top 22 orchestras in the United States included women composers in their programming, according to a survey of the 2014-2015 concert season. And among living composers being programmed, women accounted only 14%, which means we can’t go blaming Beethoven and Mozart for the imbalance.
The question begs to be asked: why do we still see this imbalance in concert programming? According to Higdon, there are several right answers, and they don’t all involve gender bias. “Sometimes people just don’t know enough women composers. They just don’t realize how many women are out there working—working hard,” Higdon explains. The truth is, women composers are out there—just as many as there are men. In fact, at the Curtis Institute where Higdon has taught composition since 1994, more than half of her composition students are women.
Thankfully though, according to Higdon, in the past couple of years, people have become a lot more cognizant of the fact that there aren’t enough women composers on classical concerts. "It’s getting better, but I think there’s lots of room for improvement." She goes on to explain how, more and more often, artistic administrators who do the programming for orchestras are starting to look around for women composers to include in their concerts.
When the answer is gender bias, people are not inclined to share their biases and prejudices anyway. "People don’t come up and tell you, ‘Oh we’re not going to program you because you’re a woman,'" Jennifer explains. Consequently, women composers can be left questioning themselves, in the dark as to why they aren’t being heard. But Higdon is a radiant picture of steadfast perseverance, as no ounce of prejudice was ever enough to stop her from creating her best work. "I can remember in the early days when I was starting my career, probably in the late 90s, people were saying things to me like ‘I can’t believe a woman wrote that.'" At first, Higdon’s reaction to comments like these was to ask, "Really? What does that mean exactly?" But eventually, her response evolved into, "Yeah, a woman wrote it! It’s a fact. You need to get used to it."
Let your music do the talking
Perhaps the most important lesson emphasized by Higdon is that no composer should ever give up and stop writing, even if she feels excluded, outnumbered, or unheard. "Keep writing the best music that you can," Higdon says. "That’s going to be the best argument to get your music out there; to have music where people go, ‘Oh, I want to hear that again!'" The sound advice is as empowering as it is true, for it comes from one of America’s most performed living composers. It is Higdon’s experience that if you keep creating your best work, eventually the fact that you’re a woman will become less and less relevant. The music will speak for itself”.
What can be done?! This 2017 feature suggested ideas such as embracing female composers and sharing their work. Classical music is also unique in the sense that so many concerts favour the work of deceased composers. Names we all know very well. Rather than actively seeking the work of new female Classic composers, programmes are still quite rigid regarding male composers from often centuries ago. Even as early as 2014, features like this show how there is internalised sexualisation of women within Classical music. It extends to film composers too. Like Pop and other areas of music, emphasis placed on selling their image and looks rather than talent and what comes out of their mouths. Earlier this year, Claire Gibault spoke with The New York Times about sexism and discrimination she has faced as a conductor. Maybe there are fewer female composers being encouraged, even if there are more women in orchestras. There is this imbalance that is slow to reverse. There are no easy solutions. A lot of the issues revolve around this assumption that men are more worthy and fewer incredible female Classic and film composers are worth investigating. Hannah Peel is an example of an innovative composer whose work is extraordinary and inspiring. As President as The F-List, she will be able to highlight incredible women across all genres - through she will also look to film and Classical composition and help support and expose the work of amazing women. I know Peel will highlight imbalances and issues that need tackling and redressing. There are great organisations working alongside The F-List, helping to bring about discussion and affect change.
PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels
More needs to be done at educational level to ensure that girls are supported if they want to become composers in film or Classical music. There are inspiring composers at the top of their game who are role models and can act as guides. Gender stereotypes exist in music. Assumption girls won’t want to be anything other than a Pop artist. That girls can’t compose or have that ability. Encouraging more modern composers and changing the syllabus so that new work from female composers is made visible. From there, orchestras need to be more gender-blind and less discriminatory and restrictive when it comes to female musicians and conductors. Great film scores and soundtracks from women should be as revered and spotlighted as much as that of men. There is a lot that the industry needs to be done. There are some wonderful composer out there, yet we mainly hear about men. Legends and modern icons are in our midst. Female filmmakers and young filmmakers are more likely to support female composers knowing their struggle. Bigger male filmmakers and huge studios perhaps far less reliant on men. Hannah Peel’s appointment as President of The F-List gives encouragement for many reasons. She can help shine a light on inequality and years-long issues and add personal perspective and passion. Festival bills are still massively imbalanced. As an artist, she has this unique perspective and can help support so many female musicians who are festival-worthy and help bring about progress and pipeline unclogging. She is also someone dedicated to progress and evolution. With the wonderful Peel as their President, the wonderful and hugely important The F-List is…
IN mighty fine hands!