A big thank you to all who attended so enthusiastically the Musical Soiree at Joondalup Library yesterday for International Women’s Day. There was a lovely spirit to the gathering and fabulous reactions and interactions to music by Cat Hope, Elena Kats-Chernin, Becky Llewellyn, Margaret Sutherland and Ros Bandt.

Thanks to Joondalup Library for hosting so elegantly and to Jacquie Davidson for being my paparazzi!

There were a number of comments about the celebratory and creative atmosphere around the topic of International Women’s Day, which can often be a gloomy/bombastic affair. Certainly women in composition continue to suffer from visibility issues. But in Australia we have  the benefit of up-to-date documentation (The Australian Music Centre and Women of Note) and given 25% of our composers are women – more than almost any other western country – we have plenty to celebrate. I look forward to this being represented more accurately in our concert programming and commissioning. And meanwhile, I’ll keep celebrating!