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Eastman School to host Gender Equity in Music conference
Eastman School to host Gender Equity in Music conference
Listen to this articleEastman School of Music next week will host its first Gender Equity in Music conference to surface issues of gender inequity in music and design strategies to address them. The conference also is designed to help participants learn skills necessary to address and change the inequities in their lives and future careers.
In addition to workshops, presentations and poster sessions, Elizabeth Rowe, principal flute of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, will serve as keynote speaker. The event will be held March 3 at the school’s location on Gibbs Street downtown.
“Our goals in creating this daylong event are to examine the impact of equity issues on the preparation and professional lives of musicians and to collectively identify action steps we can take to make changes for the future,” said Donna Brink Fox, senior associate dean of academic and student affairs at Eastman. “This is the first event of its kind at Eastman and we believe that everyone in our community has a state in this conversation.”
The planning team for the conference involved students, staff and faculty. Faculty have been encouraged to take their classes to the conference or to shift their teaching schedule so that they and their students can participate together and continue the conversation beyond the single-day experience.
“I am thrilled that Eastman is taking the time to delve into this timely and important topic,” said Jamal Rossi, the Joan and Martin Messinger Dean at Eastman. “As a school, we are very fortunate to have the committed student, staff and faculty colleagues who have been planning this for several months.”
The free event’s keynote speaker is the principal flutist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and her playing can be heard on numerous Grammy-award winning recordings. Rowe attracted international attention in 2018 when she filed an equal-pay lawsuit against the orchestra. She and the BSO successfully mediated the case last year and she remains a member of the orchestra.
Her case and others have been featured in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and on NPR and CNN.
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