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wychwoodWe trekked up to Manchester with choir yesterday, which is always an interesting experience. The BBC Phil is very different from our orchestra, and because they exist primarily to perform for radio broadcasts rather than making their income by selling concert tickets, the hall is often pretty empty - but not yesterday, which was about 90% full, I think.
The vast majority of our concerts are with our own orchestra, and the BBC Phil is the only other one we work with regularly enough to start to get to know them a bit by sight. Their lead cello has always been rather Byronic; he's now rather less so than formerly, partly because his hair is thinning and therefore less dramatically swoopy, but I did leave the building to find him outside smoking in a leather jacket, so he's clearly still fully committed to the bad boy lifestyle.
The orchestra is also unusual in its gender ratios - unlike literally every lower level of music-making, which are all female-dominated, orchestras in Western Europe tend to be around 70% male (and about 90% white, which is less of a contrast with the amateur scene), and there's still a pattern where even a majority-female section will often have a male leader (like primary school teachers!). But this lot was actually majority female yesterday - a couple of the younger sopranos counted and got 50 men and 62 women. A lot of the usual patterns (violins majority female, percentage dropping as you get lower down in the strings; more women in the woodwind but hardly any in brass or percussion, and even in the woodwind more on the flutes than the bassoons... lower-register instruments are always more manly!), but with so many more women that means there are enough to have multiple female section leaders! a woman in the percussion! two or three brass! THREE double-basses!
I did say to the others that you do often see more women in Mahler orchestras, because they're so huge - they bring in a lot of deps for something like this, because no one needs eight double-basses as a regular thing, and those are lower down the professional tree and therefore skew more female. But even so, it was really novel to see just that many women on stage!
The audience was very enthusiastic! which is always nice. We got a bigger cheer than the orchestra or the soloists, which always seems a bit mean when the orchestra play for ninety minutes and we only sing for ten, but it's true that we get the best bits of the piece, so... And now back to work and next weekend is very nearly free, except for (nooooo) my reaudition for choir, the highlight of every two-year period.
The vast majority of our concerts are with our own orchestra, and the BBC Phil is the only other one we work with regularly enough to start to get to know them a bit by sight. Their lead cello has always been rather Byronic; he's now rather less so than formerly, partly because his hair is thinning and therefore less dramatically swoopy, but I did leave the building to find him outside smoking in a leather jacket, so he's clearly still fully committed to the bad boy lifestyle.
The orchestra is also unusual in its gender ratios - unlike literally every lower level of music-making, which are all female-dominated, orchestras in Western Europe tend to be around 70% male (and about 90% white, which is less of a contrast with the amateur scene), and there's still a pattern where even a majority-female section will often have a male leader (like primary school teachers!). But this lot was actually majority female yesterday - a couple of the younger sopranos counted and got 50 men and 62 women. A lot of the usual patterns (violins majority female, percentage dropping as you get lower down in the strings; more women in the woodwind but hardly any in brass or percussion, and even in the woodwind more on the flutes than the bassoons... lower-register instruments are always more manly!), but with so many more women that means there are enough to have multiple female section leaders! a woman in the percussion! two or three brass! THREE double-basses!
I did say to the others that you do often see more women in Mahler orchestras, because they're so huge - they bring in a lot of deps for something like this, because no one needs eight double-basses as a regular thing, and those are lower down the professional tree and therefore skew more female. But even so, it was really novel to see just that many women on stage!
The audience was very enthusiastic! which is always nice. We got a bigger cheer than the orchestra or the soloists, which always seems a bit mean when the orchestra play for ninety minutes and we only sing for ten, but it's true that we get the best bits of the piece, so... And now back to work and next weekend is very nearly free, except for (nooooo) my reaudition for choir, the highlight of every two-year period.
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Date: 2026-06-15 10:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-06-15 10:38 am (UTC)