‘A stick of rosewood isn’t very heavy,” says Eímear Noone, during a transatlantic call from Malibu. “There’s no physical reason why women shouldn’t conduct.”
If anyone needs proof of that theorem they just need to look at the wide-ranging CV of the Galway-born conductor and composer. Noone was the first woman to conduct at the National Concert Hall, aged 22, and is now arguably the world's premier conductor of video-game scores, with work on World of Warcraft, Zelda and Diablo, among others. She's conducted at Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas's film-making base, and led some of the world's great ensembles, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic and the Sydney Symphony, into musical battle.
She’s also the brain behind the forthcoming iDig Music Festival – aka Dublin International Game Music Festival – a three-day celebration of video-game music and the people who create it, at Convention Centre Dublin in April.
Noone is so passionate about the conference that it seems unfortunate to digress to ask her about sexism in classical music. Is she tired of being asked about how tough a world it is to make it in as a woman? “I’m not sick of answering the question. That question needs to be asked until it is no longer relevant, until it doesn’t occur to be asked.”
She decided to be a conductor when she was 19. “Very shyly, as I didn’t want to say it out loud, as I felt so modest in my ambition, in front of someone I had grown up watching on TV, who I was in awe of at the time. He laughed out loud at me. He said, ‘You have three things against you: you’re Irish, you’re young and you’re female.’ Up to that point I thought they were three positives.”
This reaction is unsurprising. In 2013 Bruno Mantovani, the head of the Paris conservatoire for music and dance, said “the profession of a conductor is a profession that is particularly testing physically; sometimes women are discouraged by the very physical aspect: conducting, taking a plane, taking another plane, conducting again”.
Yuri Temirkanov, the longtime music director of the St Petersburg Philharmonic, went one step further the year before, saying, “The essence of the conductor’s profession is strength. The essence of a woman is weakness.” And then there is the maternity chestnut: woman conductors would be crippled by separation anxiety and would miss many months on maternity leave.
“That’s absolute rubbish. Is it as demanding as running a marathon? As waiting tables for 10 hours a day? Absolutely not. I was conducting Beethoven V at 38 weeks pregnant, standing for nine-hour recording sessions. I conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of the finest orchestras in the world, when I was seven months gone.
“My commute was to the airport, and the doctor told me it was the best thing I could possibly do. I came up against producers who felt it wasn’t appropriate, none of whom were doctors.”
Proving herself
Despite her success, Noone still has to prove herself at the start of every recording session. “I’m blonde, I’ve long hair, and when they see me walk in you can see the look on the client’s face. They think I’m there because of those things and they think, OMG, this is a $500,000 recording project.
“Those thoughts are gone within the hour. I run my recordings like a general. I’m always thinking of the next generation, and I would like that perception to stop with ours. Because it’s just a perception. You can’t tell that someone is a woman on a recording.”
The New Yorker JoAnn Falletta was the first female conductor of the Ulster Orchestra. Now 61, the Grammy winner first came up against sexism in the early 1970s, at college. “There was scepticism about if a woman could be accepted on the podium in such a male-oriented field. But as orchestras became more populated by women, and played pieces by women, it changed – slightly. By now I thought people wouldn’t even be making the distinction. The change has come much more slowly than I imagined.”
Falletta thinks it’s because people have trenchant ideas about how a conductor should behave. “The image of a conductor is of a great autocrat, and that’s really not true. In fact it’s one benefit women may have over men when it comes to conducting. Women – in their upbringing, generally – are thought to be consensus builders. To bring people together. They are much more likely to be willing to be inclusive of the orchestra members in the process.”
Acclaimed by the New York Times as one of the finest conductors of her generation, Falletta regularly gets calls from women in the business.
“They are confused, don’t know how to handle a specific problem, even something as simple as what to wear for their first concert . . . or they might be having difficulty with a player who thinks that women can’t be conductors.”
She says it’s hard to know if she is coming up against sexism. “It squirrels away. Why someone feels uncomfortable you don’t always know. Is it the tempo they don’t like, or because a woman is conducting? Early on I made an important decision never to look for sexism, because I felt if I looked for it I would find it, and that would prevent me from being free enough to do my job.”
In April Moscow State Opera will present Madama Butterfly in Dublin, conducted by Alevtina Ioffe. Ioffe says she has never witnessed anyone being kept down because of their gender. "I don't think the world of classical music is sexist at all. I did have a professor in conservatory who said, 'It will be a problem: you will have a family and a baby, and it will not be very useful for your job.' But I have all that, and it's because of all that that I have a good career."
Ioffe concedes that she physically found conducting difficult in the beginning. "Sometimes I was tired, especially when younger, doing Swan Lake. It was very hard for my arms and my back. One day I couldn't stray from the bed. But it gets better and better, like a drug for the body. I need it for my physical happiness. It's like going to the gym."
Passion, not gender
The gaming community has a poor reputation for equality, but Noone says that it not her experience. “I will say one thing about the gaming environment for me as a conductor: they don’t care that I’m female. What they care about is the passion that they see for the music on stage. So when I hear about that other nonsense . . . those people haven’t been at Madison Square Garden watching the kerfuffle as fans are trying to get a paraplegic in to hear the orchestra. I mean, what it has taken that person to get there at all is so mind-blowing, and so inspiring, that small-minded people can’t get near me. They can’t touch how I feel, because other people are willing to make that much effort to show up for my orchestra. So that’s where my focus needs to be.”
Track record: How gamers are reinvigorating classical music
Classical composers have a fine record when it comes to taking advantage of the newfound freedom offered by emerging forms, whether it be working in opera, theatre or ballet.
In the 20th century, film put the paddles to orchestral music . And in 2015 it’s the video-game industry that is giving the classical fan base a youthful shot in the arm.
“I’ve toured all over the world doing symphonic game music, and everywhere we go it sells out,” says Eímear Noone. “Gamers are a fantastic audience, turning up in costumes from the games and treating the composers like rock stars.”
Many of these rock stars will be in Dublin for the iDig Music Festival, including the Video Games Live creator Tommy Tallarico, who specialises in staging concerts where games scores are performed live with audience interaction, snippets of games and synchronised lighting and effects.
Christopher Tin, who won the first Grammy for video-game music, for ‘Civilization IV’, and Russell Brower, director of audio and video at Blizzard Entertainment, will also be performing; musical fusion will be brought about by the Irish band The Spoony Bards, who play game music with a hard rock bent, and the DIT Irish Traditional Music Ensemble, who will be doing game music with a trad bent.
“We have the composers giving demonstrations of their music, how they wrote it and showing some videos from the games. And it will act as an expo of the Irish gaming industry. We’re bringing people over from the States, so the Irish scene will have a conduit to get more involved with the American industry as well.”
And as this audience is one that enjoys interactivity with their entertainment, musicians from around the world have contributed videos of themselves performing parts of the score that Noone will be conducting at her gig. The videos will be part of a montage that will accompany the live performance, and make the first YouTube Orchestra.
iDig Music Festival is at Convention Centre Dublin, April 2nd-4th. Madama Butterfly is at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin, April 22nd-26th
