Female conductor with Warren Symphony Orchestra defies gender divide in music

Among local music groups reviving schedules canceled during the COVID-19 crisis is the Warren Symphony Orchestra ― formerly the Motor City Orchestra ― marking 50 years after its founding.

On Sunday, the group has its first normal concert in 2½ years. That's normal as in not wearing masks and not sitting 6 feet apart, roadblocks to playing their best.

With an all-American playlist, the concert honors Friday’s observance of Veterans Day; admission is free to military veterans. Without saying so, it also will sound a note of all-American diversity, thanks to who's on the podium: a female conductor. Only a fraction of professional orchestras like this are led by women.

Men conduct 85% of the nation’s professional orchestras; and women hold an even smaller share of the roughly 100 top conductor posts nationwide, according to the League of American Orchestras (the Warren ensemble is not considered one of the top 100). That gender divide is just as rigid elsewhere in music. Compare that to the rest of American culture: Gender inclusion has a big head of steam. Women are starring in action films, filling the nonprofit sector, outnumbering men in law and medical schools, and cracking if not shattering the glass ceiling in politics.

Increasingly, surveys show that most male privilege is relegated to shrouded domains, such as corporate boards and the hidden hierarchies of religion. Yet, in one of society's most public domains, professional music-making of all kinds remains a bastion of male dominance. As of 2020, only 69 of the 888 inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have been women — just 7.7% over 35 years, according to the website of Vice Media Group. Women may become top vocalists or virtuoso soloists of world renown. Still, far fewer women make a living strumming guitars, thumping drums or raising batons to lead professional orchestras.

From rock stages and country music bars to classical music halls, women watch but they don’t perform. Rock and rap music notoriously takes their sexism well beyond exclusion, not only keeping women off stages except as occasional dancing sex objects; they also keep women in their place with a long history of demeaning, often misogynistic lyrics — "Under My Thumb." according to the title song of one of the Rolling Stones biggest hits.

Last week, conductor Gina Provenzano lifted her baton and the sounds of the Warren Symphony Orchestra filled the auditorium of Warren Woods Middle School. The program was a warmup for the players’ public concert, which is scheduled for 3 p.m. Sunday at the Macomb Center for the Performing Arts in Clinton Township. The warmup gave kids in school bands a chance to hear, and see, their instruments in the hands of pros. Hearing famous movie themes played live was a rare opportunity for these schoolkids. Also rare was seeing Provenzano doing a job that audiences almost always see done by a man. Her role-modeling might have been as important as the music to these youngsters, she said, as the audience filed out.

“One of our board members heard a little girl say, ‘She was a lady. I could do that someday!’ That’s exactly what I like to hear,” Provenzano said. Things were different for her, she said. In conducting classes at the University of Michigan years ago, she was taught to conduct only as preparation for leading groups as an elementary school music teacher.“I’m almost angry about it. They never talked about women being able to conduct professionally,” she said.

For years she was indeed relegated to teaching music, but slowly her ambition to conduct grew. She found male mentors willing to coach her, spent a stint leading a youth orchestra in Maine, then moved back to Michigan with her husband and children, taking a job as the conductor of the Midland Community Orchestra.

“They’re not paid, although I was,” Provenzano said. The Warren group’s board hired her six years ago. Audiences are still getting used to her.

“After a concert, people will come by — ‘Oh, your suit is lovely’ or ‘You should do something different with your hair.’ I don’t think in a million years people would comment on a male conductor’s appearance,” Provenzano said.“It’s odd because you’re not doing anything inherently masculine. It’s gender neutral,” she said.

Likewise, there’s nothing inherently mannish about strumming electric guitars or banging on drums except that the culture has made it so. But it’s a man’s world for anyone playing on concert tours or the bar circuit, said Amanda LeClair, a co-host of the music-based “Culture Shift” show on WDET-FM (101.9) in Detroit.

“You’re up against this incredible gate-keeping by male musicians,” LeClair said. For women who dare to step up to play an instrument, and not merely sing to front male players, there’s a high standard waiting that has nothing to do with music.

“You not only have to play your instrument well but you also have to look good,” she said. Even if you are a “looker,” the stress of fending off male sniping takes a toll. “Think about Meg White. She played drums with one of the biggest bands in the country (White Stripes), and she just got ripped apart by men in the media and online for her playing,” LeClair said. White quit the Detroit-based duo because of “acute anxiety,” according to multiple online celebrity sites, including TheList.com.

Women are known to face safety risks, including potential sexual assault, in fields of sports and performing arts dominated by male authority figures — from gymnastics and ballet to music, especially in the rock-pop-country-jazz music scenes, where big egos typically mix with late-night performances and substance abuse.

Last week at the middle school in Warren, as student stagehands carted off music stands, Terence Farmer, of Ann Arbor, packed up his kettledrums, aka tympani, and mused about performing to a woman's direction.

Farmer's view was informed by 44 years of striking drumheads stretched over big copper bowls, in precise cadence to the rise and fall of a conductor's baton.

He smiled wistfully, then said having a woman set the pace "puts a different flavor on things, but it's definitely not a bad flavor."

Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com