"Too Many Frocks", Season 2

Women at the keyboard and women accompanying songs were ubiquitous in domestic spheres since the invention of the keyboard instrument. Though a predominantly female pursuit in domestic and salon circles, the professionalization of the art song pianist beginning in the late 19th century inevitably flipped that script, with lasting implications. Today it is situated in a gray space between chamber musician, service provider, and coach / pseudo-conductor. While it is common knowledge that female film directors, conductors and composers are rare beasts today, the prevalence of (white) males at the piano on top stages — despite top educational programs and university staff position skewing majority female for decades — is a surprise to many. In fact, relatively little thought is generally given to the niche profession of the art song pianist in general.

In the interest of changing that, between the summer of 2018 and spring 2020 Chanda VanderHart conducted and recorded interviews with leading professionals in the field — primarily pianists but also musicologists, singers and sociologists — were conducted both in person and via zoom in the interest of exploring the marginalized field of art song piano. The result was a seven episode series podcast narrated, written and conceived by pianist and musicologist Chanda VanderHart, with technical assistance by Bill Lloyd and financial support from the Insitute for Musicology and Performance studies (IMI) at the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. The seven episodes were published in 2021/2022, available via spotify, sound cloud and apple podcasts and archived in the mdw-Audiothek and archived in Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10641137).

Thanks to renewed funding by IMI and the Platform Gender_mdw a second season of nine further episodes featuring in depth interviews by field experts Bryan Benner, Lana Bode, Florian Boesch, Elaine Chia, John Michael Cooper, Aiden Feltkamp, Jocelyn Freeman, Martha Guth, Markus Hadulla, Wolfgang Holzmair, Kathleen Kelly, Sholto Kynoch, Natasha Loges, Holden Madagame, Rebecca Nelsen, Elnora Pertz, Elvia Puccinelli, Emma Rothmann, Pauliina Tukiainen, Bonnie Wagner and Roderick Williams were created in summer of 2022 through early winter of 2023. These were added to the collection (i.e. released) in December 2023 and January 2024 and are archived here in .mp3 format.