Girls Who Conduct was launched in the summer of 2020 by founder Chaowen Ting (NanoWorks Opera, director of Orchestra at Georgia Tech) and I was on the ground floor as a co-founder. We will also be launching a podcast where each episode will focus on a piece we've recorded including interviews with the composer and the collaborating ensemble director.
Our website houses all the recordings (as well as information on the composers and where to purchase the pieces) and we also advertise consortium opportunities by underrepresented composers, databases of programmable works, and a resource list of other DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives in the classical music world. We plan to launch a chamber ensemble branch later in the season.
My thought was: if so many people want to be programming with more composer diversity and can't find the music, why don't we develop a program where we can match composers with ensembles who will record reference audio of their works - and give them valuable feedback during the collaboration process?Īs of fall 2021, we have 47 recording projects completed (even though most of our history was during the very challenging pandemic era) and have branches working with composers and ensembles in the wind band, orchestral and choral areas. A point was raised that it was difficult to find music by diverse composers and, even when you could, if their music had no reference recording or perusal score, it made it very difficult to select the work. The idea came to me after I witnessed a heated discussion on social media where two camps were debating whether composer demographics were important when programming concerts. UK Fine Arts: Tell us about the two projects you were instrumental in creating - And We Were Heard and Girls Who Conduct.īove: I founded And We Were Heard in the fall of 2018 while I was still a graduate student at UK along with a few friends across the country in the wind band scene.
UK College of Fine Arts recently caught up with Bove and learned more about her passion to advocate for women and other composers and conductors from diverse backgrounds in the world of classical music. Bove is not only serving the field of a music as an educator, but she co-founded the Girls Who Conduct initiative and founded And We Were Heard, a nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting underrepresented composers with the larger classical music community. Even before finishing her degree in conducting, Kaitlin Bove, D.M.A., had begun to focus her career on empowering new voices in classical music.
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