A #HearAllComposers Playlist

On March 21, musicians and music lovers who desired more diverse orchestral programming took to Twitter with the hashtag #HearAllComposers, to encourage symphony orchestras to program music by non-male and non-white composers. The hashtag came largely from the efforts of Emma O’Halloran, Annika Socolofsky, Amanda Feery, and Finola Merivale, all young composers frustrated with the overwhelming imbalance between music by white males and music by literally everyone else that gets chosen for programming. One or two pieces by women in an orchestra’s full season isn’t much, but going by the statistics Brian Lauritzen has been tweeting out every time an American symphony orchestra announces its season, that’s what we’ll hear if we’re lucky. Performances of music by nonwhite composers are similarly rare.A template for posting to the hashtag circulated on Twitter: include a piece, include a photograph of the composer, and tag the major orchestras and organizations listed in the photo. Jeff Brown and I joined in with some contributions, and I compiled playlists on YouTube and SoundCloud of everyone’s submissions to the hashtag. A longer article incorporating #HearAllComposers will be forthcoming, but for now, we hope you enjoy this playlist of some music posted throughout the day. —Zoë Madonna