Female Composers Are Trying to Break Film’s Sound Barrier

It will be a great day when we no longer refer to "female" artists.

One glaring omission from the list of accomplished women composers and film scorers named in this article is Erin O'Hara, whose work in "Sicko" and "Day Zero," among other great and greatly underappreciated films, stands out.

As music film scores rarely stand out, on their own so to speak. From the snippet here Tamar-kali creates the exception. So good, she should recreate that for symphony orchestra.

"Let's go with what works," is the standard strategy that Hollywood embraces, not realizing that it creates generations of the same people scoring, photographing, editing, and assembling films. Those same people and their friends and family. That is the phenomenon that causes us to end up with a wall of white faces in our ranks, making the films. If we are used to having men in our orchestras and men conducting them and men scoring the music for the films, then "let's go with what works" keeps it that way. That is the phenomenon that puts a Howard Shore score onto the Lord of the Rings trilogy (bankable and incredibly capable) instead of Johan de Meij who wrote a Lord of the Rings symphony in the 1970s that could be expanded upon as its own masterpiece. Such "go with what works" strategies are artistically limiting also. I'd like to see the NY Times follow up with an article that asks about the independent films, the low-dollar films with good soundtracks. Are they limiting their choices for composers, similarly? Those films have less money to lose by hiring unknown composers who are academics, female, or an underrepresented minority. That is one way that these artists can get the experience to show that they're bankable.

High on the list of distinguished female composers of film soundtracks should be Eleni Karaindrou, who's done remarkable work with the director Theo Angelopoulos. Her large body of film music is some of the most moving and memorable that I've ever heard.

Congrats Mr Greiving, I had to read till almost the end before the male bashing started, a trademark of NYTimes stories on gender. Let's go over it again. Discrimination against women was outlawed app. 1980. Since then countless women have come forward complained/sued and won. I know I saw many in the large corporation I worked for. What not to do? Rationalize, intellectualize, finger point, scapegoat, ax grind, fault all female problems on today's man, who must atone for five millions yrs. of existence. Hillary tried it and served up the ego maniac demagogue Trump on a platter to us. Americans, except the extreme left or right hate identity politics including most women.

Despite more than adequate training, it took me years to break into the business as an orchestrator, but I was never able to score a major film. Yet. This article gives me hope. Thanks to the NYT for publishing and to all those wonderful women who contributed to this article. I hope it inspires all to create and bring their special individual composing talents to more film/tv/media.

Time for fans of racial, ethnic and gender quotas in all professions to stop hiding behind euphamisms and speak out in favor of the pre-determined outcomes they clearly prefer. And please, lets hear no more about a meritocracy - in any field. If politics is all about dividing up the spoils - and it is - then lets be up front about it, for once. I look forward to seeing how that will work out in practice. Will Jews be considered a minority? Or will their skin color and overall success as a community leave them tagged as "White people?" Inquiring minds would like to know.

This is wonderful news for young girls. If I’d known these types of opportunities would become available to women I would have studied composition while in music school in the 80s. It never seemed plausible.

Mica Levi's score for 'Jackie' was wonderful, conveying the mental states of the lead character by dissonance and slow slides out of harmony. I've never heard a film score so effectively transmit interior human thoughts and feelings. A marvellous score for a film notable for prolonged close-ups.