All Music For Everyone: Working Towards Gender Equality and Empowerment in Australian Music Culture
Published in Limelight Magazine, December 05, 2018
I am very honoured to be giving the 2018 Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address. Established by the New Music Network in 1999, I follow in the footsteps of amazing musicians and speakers that have included Genevieve Lacey, Warren Burt, Michael Kieran Harvey, Nicole Canham, Simone Young, and the late Richard Gill. In 2014, I was fortunate enough to be awarded the annual composers’ residency at the Peggy Glanville-Hicks House, a residence she bequeathed to the nation for use by its composers. I wonder what she would make of the state of affairs for women composers and critics now, compared to her time. She famously quipped that “everything I’ve ever wanted to do would have been much easier had I been a boy. But never mind, I never paid much attention to it, I just marched in and there I was.” (Ford, 2012). As Victoria Rogers points out in her study of Glanville-Hicks’ music, Peggy fought her own battles for equality and acceptance, and they came at some personal cost, coming as she did before the second wave of feminism (Rogers, 2017, p107).