The new music ensemble’s performance for International Women’s Day launches a year celebrating female composers.

In 2017, Ensemble Offspring (EO) is performing music composed exclusively by women. And to celebrate International Women’s Day, the new music ensemble is presenting Arc Electric – a showcase of works by female composers from Australia and around the world. Angus McPherson spoke to EO Artistic Director Claire Edwardes about the programme.

Arc Electric launches EO’s year of championing female composers. Why is this so important?

We feel that it’s really important to shine the spotlight on female composers for an entire season to make a start to changing the paradigm of the dominant male composer, which has been in existence for almost the entire history of western music. For so long, we have all programmed mostly male composers, just because their output has been more prominent and prevalent – and so it becomes almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that men are programmed predominantly because we keep seeing their work, it’s always around us and in our face. Ensemble Offspring see our commitment to programming all female composers as one way to disrupt the status quo and make the work of a diverse range of women more...