April 10, 2024, 09:36 | Updated: April 10, 2024, 09:42
The Dunn Foundation successfully set a Guinness World Record for the longest acoustic music live-streamed concert with a 26-hour concert of music by women and non-binary composers.Photo: Classic FM / Marcelo Quiñones Sáez
The Guinness World Record attempt featured over 120 musicians performing over 24 hours of music, all written by women and non-binary composers.
On Thursday, February 22nd, over 120 musicians gathered in central London to attempt a Guinness World Record for 'Longest Acoustic Music Live Streaming Concert'.
For 26 hours, performers took to the stage to perform a variety of music, from classical to pop, with one unifying theme. All of the music performed was written by women or non-binary composers.
Performers included former Iron Maiden keyboardist Tony Moore, pianist Antonio Oyarzabal, soprano Carolyn Sampson, and baritone Roderick Williams.
“I want to contribute to change,” soprano and organizer Gabriela Di Raccio told Classic FM. “But I think we need to be bigger, because I want to be as big as the people who have the power to make change.
“So I thought, let's break a record to create a movement bigger than me, bigger than Dan, bigger than classical music.”
Read more: 10 women who changed the world of classical music forever
The world record attempt, titled “Let HER MUSIC Play,” was created by Di Raccio, founder of Donne, Women in Music, a philanthropic foundation dedicated to amplifying the voices of women composers from all fields of music. It was the idea of
Di Raccio inspired Don in 2018 when she discovered a second-hand encyclopedia of more than 5,000 female composers, and how many of them were unknown. I was born when I realized that
She uploaded their names to a website she now calls “The Big List.” Later that year, Di Raccio investigated the music performed by 15 of the world's leading orchestras and found that only 2 percent of the music was written by women.
This survey became Dunn's annual project, and the proportion of music by female composers increased, albeit slowly, each year. But even now, including her more than 100 orchestras around the world, that percentage still remains less than 8% of her.
“I think progress is very slow,” DiRaccio said. “And I don't know why. No one is convincing me that I need to slow down.”
Read more: Nine of the world's 20 most-performed living composers are women, new report reveals
Gabriel Di Raccio holds Guinness World Record for longest acoustic music live streaming concert.Photo: Marcelo Quiñones Sáez
Pianist Antonio Oyarzabal is one of many musicians working to change the tide for female composers. A Dan Ambassador since 2021, he has built a career around researching, performing, and recording music by women.
His journey began at the age of 11, when his harpsichord teacher introduced him to the music of Elisabeth Jaquet de La Guerre, an experience he says he considers “very honoured.” Subsequent exploration led him to the music of Lili Boulanger and Germaine Tailleferre, the only female member of the group of French composers known as “Les Six.”
But the more I discovered, the more I realized how little I knew. “I discovered more and more composers, read books and educated myself, realized things that had been ignored until now and decided to be more active,” he said.
Read more: Who was Lili Boulanger? Meet the inspiring composer who tragically died young
Oyarzabal currently spends much of his time researching to discover new music.
“I go to the British Library almost every week to do research,” he says, adding that he also spends time checking out online libraries around the world. “It’s more of an academic kind of work, less of a performer’s work.
“In order to incorporate music into recitals, we really need to provide more tools and make this music more accessible.”
What all music lovers can do, Oyarzabal says, is to seek out diverse composers within the styles of music we already enjoy, especially as more and more music is recorded.
“Let's give it a chance, let's get out of our comfort zone,” he told Classic FM. “And gradually you become addicted to the repertoire. You have to give the audience a chance to listen to it again and again and get used to it.”
One of the risks that Gabriela di Raccio has in mind is the increased focus on female composers becoming something of a fad.
DiRaccio referred to 20th century composer Elizabeth McConchy, saying that every time she walked through the gates of London's Royal College of Music, she was greeted as “the great McConchy.”
“I had never heard of her and I studied there,” DiRaccio told Classic FM. “It's so scary to see how revered they were and how easily they were forgotten.
“This campaign is my call to action. We need to grow this because there's no way this is going to be a trend. We need to make it stick.”