Programming by the Numbers: Holding Myself Accountable

I’m very excited about the upcoming season with Mesquite Symphony Orchestra! Here’s the season in more detailed numbers:

Percentages are based on the duration of the work

24 compositions programmed (so far)

By ethnicity (there’s no perfect definition here, so I went with my gut) 13 white (59.9%) 5 POC (19.4%) 2 Asian (8.7%) 2 Hispanic/Latin (6.6%) 1 medley of various unidentified composers (2.8%) 1 Persian (2.7%)

Gender (this is by far the most embarrassing of all the metrics, more below) 20 male (81.5%) 4 female (18.5%)

Living or Deceased 8 deceased (36%) 16 LIVING! (64%)

I’m obviously most proud of the duration of music we’re performing by LIVING composers: 64%! And we’re performing about 40% by the duration of notes by non-white composers.

The most embarrassing metric is gender. I thought I was doing better here, but there’s still work to be done. Now, in terms of the duration of notes performed, it’s almost 20%, which is far better than many ensembles, but I still don’t like how lopsided it looks in terms of the pure number of works. There are still a few works to be programmed, so I’ll continue to look at this.

I’m very grateful to my musicians and board for trusting me to put together a compelling season of a wide variety of works from composers across the spectrum. And a special shoutout to the board for approving a music budget this coming season that is almost 5x what it was when I first became Music Director.

Music by living and recently deceased composers is EXPENSIVE! Musicians need to be paid, so we’ll keep finding ways to raise money and program this music – it’s essential to the future of the art form.