On the RISE: How Maestra Music is Altering the Theatre Business

Moderator: Nancy Giles 
Panelists: Maestra Founder and Composer/Lyricist Georgia Stitt, RISE Program Supervisor and Producer Victoria Detres, Composer Helen Park, and Producer and Stage Supervisor Cody Renard Richard.

On behalf of Maestra Music, RISE Theatre, the Miranda Household Fund, and in partnership with Disney Theatrical and Kendra Scott, we hope you’ll be part of us and uncover the facility of visibility and group assist within the theatre trade. This occasion is a part of NY Music Month, an initiative of the NYC Mayor’s Workplace of Media and Leisure.

Maestra Music started in early 2017 as a collection of casual gatherings hosted by composer/lyricist and music director Georgia Stitt. Georgia labored because the music director of the Off-Broadway revival of Candy Charity (directed by Leigh Silverman, orchestrated by Mary-Mitchell Campbell, starring Sutton Foster), and the problem that workforce had discovering and hiring an all-female band illuminated an issue: girls musicians appeared to be invisible.

The casual gatherings grew bigger every month and became organized conferences with visitor audio system. The group selected the identify “Maestra” as the female counterpart to the normal “Maestro,” which refers to an eminent composer, conductor, or trainer of music. Georgia employed an online designer to show her crowd-sourced spreadsheet of ladies composers and pit musicians into an internet listing, and musicians started to signal themselves up. Maestra was filling an important want within the theater group, linking collectively musical girls and shining a highlight of their path to empower them collectively and individually.

Immediately, Maestra Music, Inc. supplies assist, visibility, and group to over 2,200 girls and nonbinary Listing members who make the music within the musical theater trade. Our membership is made up of composers, music administrators, orchestrators, arrangers, copyists, rehearsal pianists and different musicians who’re an underrepresented minority in musical theater. The group’s initiatives embody month-to-month academic seminars, mentorship applications, technical expertise workshops, networking occasions, and on-line assets and partnerships that intention to advertise equality of alternative and to deal with the numerous historic disadvantages and practices which have restricted girls and nonbinary composers and musicians within the musical theater.

Maestra’s applications have nationwide and world attain; members in Digital Technical Workshops have come from 49 states and 60 international locations, and Maestra has Regional Teams primarily based within the UK, Canada, Australia, German-speaking Europe, and Mexico Metropolis, in addition to within the main theater markets all through the US.

Up to now 12 months, Maestra’s attain has continued to develop by a partnership Listing with MUSE (Musicians United for Social Fairness) and with the launch of the RISE Theatre Listing, in-built partnership with Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Miranda Household Fund and created for backstage, administrative, and inventive professionals within the performing arts. The RISE Listing is strategically designed to amplify underrepresented artists equivalent to girls, individuals of shade, trans, non-binary, deaf, and disabled individuals.

Be part of us at this panel discussing the significance of visibility with the creation of those Directories and find out how group is cultivated and supported by the programming provided by Maestra Music.  

We’ll dive into the next subjects:

• What’s Maestra? The state of the trade, Maestra’s founding, what’s modified in 5 years
• What’s Maestra’s affect by their founding pillars of visibility, group, and assist?
• How will you assist and/or leverage directories as an employer or as somebody on the lookout for a job?
• The launch of RISE Theatre and pure evolution from Maestra’s Get to Work program 
• Maestra/RISE Companions- pointing to viable options for fairness within the trade 
• Testimonials/case research

Govt producer: Cathleen Murphy
    
Partnerships: 

• NYC Mayor’s Workplace for Media and Leisure
• Disney Theatrical 
• Kendra Scott Jewellery