First Post

I had a few thoughts today while I was practicing organ - well, a few extraneous from fingering or articulation. I thought about how my favorite organ recording artist (Joan Lippincott) is a woman. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there are actually quite a few woman recording and concert organists in the public eye - certainly more than one might think looking at individual "organ scenes".

Take, for instance, the New York City organ scene: you have names like Paul Jacobs, John Scott and McNeil Robinson floating around. Two of them teach at prestigious music schools and the third is the choir director and sometimes organist of a renowned choir school. In Philadelphia you have Peter Richard Conte (Grand Court Organist at the Macy's, which houses the largest operational organ in the world) and Alan Morrison, who teaches at Curtis (and Westminster too, actually). Those five, of course are just big names.

But what about in other circles? I don't know so much about any particular individual basis, but the organ circle in Seattle (where I grew up) is mostly male. There are a few women floating around, certainly, but it's very male-heavy on the whole.

Why then, does the ratio of men to women seem more balanced when I look at the back page of each month's edition of "The American Organist"? I do truly believe it's because each one of those women has made a name for themselves by their talent. Quite frankly, I don't think it's within the capacity of the agents who put these ads into this publication to consciously make a decision about how many women they choose to feature.