Guest Post by Penka Kouneva
On August 19, 2016, I had the honor of conducting my music in a concert titled “Women Who Score: Soundtracks Live.” This event made history, and I want to explain why.
The current film statistics show that women score less than two percent of the top 250 theatrical features released annually. In 2013, leading film and TV composers Laura Karpman, Lolita Ritmanis, and Miriam Cutler, with the support of BMI’s Doreen Ringer Ross, established The Alliance for Women Film Composers.
Composing for the orchestra historically has been inaccessible for women. Orchestras, usually of 80 people, are very expensive and composing takes years to master. One of Laura Karpman’s original dreams was for AWFC to organize an orchestral concert featuring the music of women media composers and to give visibility to their large-scale work. Why is having access to an orchestra significant? Ever since the rise of John Williams and “The New Hollywood” in the 1970s, most studio feature films have used an orchestral score.
All of the music for the concert had to be prepared with two rehearsals and a dress rehearsal. There were 20 pieces total. I calculated how many minutes of rehearsal time are allotted per piece and realized …. we’ve gotta be blazing through the music! The parts and score had to be perfect. (A score is what the conductor uses to conduct — it has the music for everyone. An orchestral part is for one individual instrument — flute, trombone, viola, etc. Each musician only looks at the notes they play.) Every time a musician has a question about the notation, there is a back-and-forth which takes minutes of precious and extremely expensive rehearsal time.
I volunteered to check the parts and scores and address ahead of time all questions of music notation that could come up. I wanted all women to have perfect scores and parts. My reason to volunteer and help the women was because as a lead orchestrator for studio films, games, and TV, I have been doing the same exact work for male composers for decades. The rehearsals were frenzied but organized, compressed but productive.
Why will this concert be a game changer for the women composers? I was already asked to submit a spec demo for a studio project, because a studio executive was in the audience. She felt the energy, the talent, and the passion demonstrated by all. She experienced our music in the context of a big, celebratory, thought-provoking event.
The greatest concern a studio executive has is that filmmaking is an extremely “high risk” business. A lot of money is at stake. An orchestral score for a feature film costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to record and produce. The “default” choice for the studios is to hire “proven entities” — composers with track record and body of orchestral scores on studio films.
It’s extremely difficult for the studio to gamble and give a large orchestra to a woman composer without a body of professional work. But without access to an orchestra to try out ideas, fail, and try again, one cannot master the mind-boggling complexities of composing for the orchestra.
The concert “Women Who Score” gave access to women composers to have their music performed by a large studio orchestra and choir. Many of them conducted as well. The concert enabled us to not only demonstrate their formidable musical talent, but also show that we can write, produce, and deliver music at the highest level — on time and on budget.
The “The Women Who Score: Soundtracks Live” concert took place in Los Angeles on August 19, 2016. It featured a sold out audience of around 1,500 people. a 55-person orchestra and 30-person choir showcased the works of 21 female composers, including Rachel Portman, Diane Warren, Penka Kouneva, Shirley Walker, Lesley Barber, Kathryn Bostic, Nan Schwartz, Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, Julia Newmann, Lolita Ritmanis, Germaine Franco, Jessica Curry, Wendy Melvoin, Lisa Coleman, Miriam Cutler, Starr Parodi, Sharon Farber, Heather McIntosh, Wendy Blackstone, Lili Haydn, and Laura Karpman.
