Your AI assistant for diversity in classical music programming
Undeniably, the canon of western classical music is dominated by a handful of male composers, and audiences often find great pleasure in attending concerts featuring their favorite compositions – a collection of works that dominates the programming of classical works across Europe. Sadly, many concert-goers remain unaware of the great body of works by exceptional women composers – admittedly, a body of work that is numerically smaller than their male counterparts, but nonetheless significant and full of exceptional masterworks. These works have been largely overlooked by the classical music industry due to a myriad of factors, including a historical lack of exposure, a lack of knowledge by concert programmers of the repertoire, the difficulty of accessing scores, the lack of professional recordings and by extension the sheer amount of work that has to be undertaken by the average concert programmer to incorporate suitable works by women. Since its founding in 2018, OpusXX has been at the forefront of rectifying the imbalance of the representation of women’s works, presenting groundbreaking programs by women composers.
Our current project aims to propagate a sustainable change in the representation of works by women composers in concert programs across Europe through the creation of an intuitive platform that streamlines the process of identifying suitable repertoire to be incorporated into concert programming. The OpusXX Generator is an intelligent research assistant trained to help individuals and institutions enact positive change through the inclusion of works by women composers in their concert programming. By providing users with an engaging and intuitive way to delve into the fascinating and largely overlooked classical repertoire by women composers, the OpusXX Generator provides the tools to create bespoke solutions to gender imbalances in concert programming, suggesting suitable repertoire for a wide variety of concert formats and generating lasting change in the industry.
