By Nina Cherry
Elizabeth Kosko began playing drums nearly twenty years ago. Since then, she has attended Emporia State University for her undergraduate degree, University of Southern California for her Masters, and has served as a substitute performer for the LA Philharmonic Orchestra and the Kansas City Symphony, among other ensembles. She is a current DMA student at UMKC’s Conservatory and Dance.
Kosko didn’t notice gender discrimination as a female percussionist throughout junior high, high school, and not even during her undergraduate studies at Emporia State, but when she did she was caught by surprise. She started to encounter discrimination when she began playing professionally. Upon moving to Los Angeles, she quickly realized that the freelancing world was a “boy’s club.”
Auditions for professional orchestras are blind, but pre-professional ensemble auditions are not. These pre-professional ensembles, such as the New World Symphony, are crucial in order to be accepted into professional orchestra auditions later on. Kosko informed me that in the past thirty years, the New World Symphony has had a total of four female percussionists – and one of them was by default. Even after a group of female percussionists petitioned for blind auditions, they refused.
Most female percussionists focus on mallet percussion, such as xylophone or marimba, with the males traditionally playing snare drum or timpani. Kosko believes that this stigma derives from marching band, with the assumption that a girl isn’t strong enough to carry a snare drum or a bass drum.
Kosko told me that she finds empowerment from her friends’ and colleagues’ success. She adds, “Something that I’ve tried to embrace more recently, which is another aspect of what makes me being a percussionist and a figure in entertainment a little bit different, is that I’m queer, but also visibly queer.” When playing in Children’s Concert Series, she believes it is important for young people to see a queer woman in the percussion section among the men.
There is a long way to go in terms of gender equity in the music industry, especially in terms of percussion, but with more women like Elizabeth Kosko, we can bridge that gap.