Tora Holter is in second grade at the music department at Langhaugen upper secondary school in Bergen. Last year she started composing her own music. Her teacher picked it up. She was encouraged to apply to Luna Composition Lab, an American mentoring program in composition for young girls and non-binaries. Then she got a place. – It’s actually very scary. But it is a chance you do not get so often, she says. Most writing by men Now the mentor program has a department in Norway. During the Bergen Festival, the participants had their first gathering. Here they have been taught, gone to concerts and discussed. If Tora becomes a composer, she will enter a male-dominated profession. For only about 20 percent of the members of the Norwegian Composers’ Association are women. 95 percent of all music performed by Norwegian orchestras and ensembles is written by men. The reason is partly that most of the repertoire is historical, ie writing at a time when only men had access to the composer’s strength. If you look at music from the last thirty years, the percentage written by women is somewhat higher. MALE DOMINANCE: Almost all music performed by Norwegian orchestras and ensembles is written by men. If Tora Holter becomes a composer, she will enter a male-dominated profession. Photo: Marion Hestholm / news – Finding your own style Now Tora Holter has decided. She wants to be a composer. – It is so incredibly fun to make your own music, and to hear someone play what you have written. I like to have a way of expressing myself musically – in addition to playing. The participants at Luna Lab receive guidance on how they can make their unique mark on the music. – I have learned a lot about how to find your own style. – What do you want to do with the knowledge you gain? Writing concert music, theater music, film music …? – I want to try a lot of different things before I decide. I’m still quite young POSSIBLE: Tora Holter thinks it’s possible to become a composer, despite several hundred years of male dominance. Photo: Marion Hestholm / news Composers and gender There are 343 members in the Norwegian Composers’ Association. Among them, 66 (19.24 percent) are women. 277 members (80.76 percent) are men. Of music written in the last 30 years, the orchestra performs 13 percent music written by women (up to 17 percent in ensembles). The girls’ project, created by Rune Rebne at the Norwegian Academy of Music and Nye Stemmer, created by Rebecka Ahvenniemi in Bergen, are among the initiatives that will ensure the recruitment of women to the composing force. The number of women applying for the composition study at NMH has increased in recent years. Luna Composition Lab will have a Norwegian branch in Bergen from May 2022. No goals for gender balance Apart from the BIT20 ensemble in Bergen, which has a programmed gender balance in the repertoire, there are no orchestra conductors that have set goals for gender balance. In the USA, the music field is less equal than in Norway. The American composer Missy Mazzoli is one of those who wants to create change. She wants more girls to get the chance. She therefore decided to start Luna Comosition Lab in 2016, a mentoring program in composition for young women and non-binaries between 12 and 18 years. AMERICAN TERMS: With the leave schemes that apply in the USA, it is not a real choice for a woman to have children, if she wants to be a composer, says Missy Mazzoli. Photo: Marion Hestholm / news – The most lonely thing you can do with Composer Therese Birkelund Ulvo is a mentor in the program. She sees that the Norwegian and American participants have had great pleasure in meeting each other and exchanging experiences. – Being a composer is one of the most lonely things you can do. Therefore, it is very important to create some environment, says Birkelund Ulvo. The participants get composition lessons with her throughout the coming year. And at the Bergen Festival 2023, they will perform a piece by professional musicians. – It is important that we work to reduce the notion that one as a composer must be ingenious. One does not have to go into a genius role. It’s like writing music, she says. GOOD MOOD: Therese Birkelund Ulvo herself went from Bergen to Oslo when she was sixteen to become a composer. Now she has to teach composers the starting pit. Photo: Thor Brødreskift / The Bergen Festival Therese Birkelund Ulvo Therese Birkelund Ulvo. (b. 1982) was born and raised in Bergen, but lives in Eidsvoll. She has a degree from the Norwegian Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She has written several orchestral works, and has been performed by most orchestras in Norway and several international orchestras and ensembles. She won the Young People’s Lindeman Prize in 2015 and the Edvard Prize 2020 in the same class for In the Cage. Ulvo wrote the music for the performance Heilage Sunniva for the Bergen Festival in 2013, and in 2014 took over the artistic direction of Hardanger Music Festival (together with singer Tora Augestad 2014-2021 and Gunilla Süssmann from 2021). Birkelund Ulvo rented the Nordic Music Days festival in 2019. During the 63rd International Rostrum for composers in Poland in 2016, Therese Birkelund Ulvo’s clarinet concerto, Shadows and Shields, was awarded the Recommended Work award. Mønstringa has close to 30 participating countries. Her concert for two piano and orchestra Woven Fingerprints was awarded the prize Work of the Year 2021 by the Norwegian Composers’ Association.
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Tora (17) is investing as a composer despite several hundred years of male dominance – news Vestland
