Posted by Alexandra Jones on June 26, 2003 at 09:11:19:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Results from Womens Brass Conference posted by Heather Noyes on June 24, 2003 at 18:29:49:
Two things:
As an attendee and competitor, I felt the conference was more educational than anything else. Chalk it up to my own ignorance, but I'd never heard of Froydis or Connie Weldon or Carole Dawn Reinhart, let alone half the performers at the conference. While I'm glad I won some money, I would've enjoyed and learned from the conference had there been no competition.
Secondly, Heather, there was feminism at the IWBC because I was there. Feminism has nothing to do with separatism or male-bashing or anything like that; it's about equality, and I think every woman who performed at or attended the conference believes that she (and any other woman) can do anything any guy can do (or almost anything, keeping biological differences in mind). A large part of creating a female community within a larger community of musicians is education. I now know about a large number of female brass players, contemporary and past, who kicked ass -- they weren't necessarily better than the men whose exploits we worship today, but they were there, too, making contributions that sometimes went unnoticed.
So yeah, guys are awesome and so are girls and everyone can go to ITEC and IWBC and learn and have fun.