Her Ensemble's Ellie Consta on music without the gender norms

‘I’d always felt I’d loved classical music, but I didn’t always love all aspects of the scene,’ admits Ellie Consta, violinist and founder of Her Ensemble, the string orchestra for musicians of marginalised genders she started towards the end of 2020. ‘Just trying to pinpoint them showed me very clearly what it was I liked and what it was that I didn’t like. Comparing how we do things in different worlds, different scenes made me think: I could take the bits that I like from both worlds and do it my own way.’

Consta had gone through a fairly standard classical performer’s education (Chetham’s School of Music followed by a master’s from the Royal College of Music) and was nicely settled into a varied freelance career when she found herself locked down during the pandemic with singer-songwriter friends from the pop world.

‘We’d lived together for ages but hadn’t really seen what each other does that closely. We just started noticing how different our lives were, even though we were all in the music industry, and I started questioning why that was. I started writing string parts for their songs, and that process was completely different to the way I was used to working in other ensembles or orchestras. I was questioning why we worked so differently: is there a specific reason or is it just because that’s how things are done?’

The pandemic brought other revelations too, notably some findings by the gender inequality combatants DONNE on equality and diversity in orchestra concerts. ‘I read the statistic that in 2019 just 3.6 per cent of classical music pieces performed worldwide were written by women, and then it rose to 5 percent [the following year] – the highest percentage recorded to date. I thought: how have I never realised that? I’ve done so many gigs, been through music school, music college, the profession, and I could only name a handful of female composers. I was thinking back to school and college and teachers saying: oh, it’s terrible, but there just weren’t as many and they just didn’t write as much. Although technically those sentences are true, there are thousands, and they wrote thousands of pieces of music.’

This, among other patriarchal consequences, encouraged Consta to focus on music by women. In that respect Her Ensemble joins a growing number of ensembles whose explicit aim is to promote women in music. Others include the instrumental groups the Scordatura Collective, the Tailleferre Ensemble and the a cappella vocal music-theatre outfit Electric Voice Theatre, whose work includes a strand celebrating the work of women in science subjects, Minerva Scientifica.

‘I realised there was a real issue with people even acknowledging the existence of non-binary people in the classical world,’ explains Consta. ‘Even thinking of dress codes: they are often binary gendered. What would I wear if I was non-binary? How would I feel, even, not just what would I wear? Thinking about my friends in those positions, I guess I just wanted to create a space for people to feel like they could flourish. And take up space – that’s also a big thing. I’m sure some of the composers we know of today as female may have identified differently if they had been able to, or if they had had the terminology.’

Her Ensemble’s first appearance came online around Christmas 2020: an arrangement for strings of Elizabeth Poston’s carol setting, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. That has led to collaborations with pop musicians as well as the ensemble’s first live, self-promoted concert in September 2021 at the Battersea Arts Centre, for which they applied and received an Arts Council grant.

They will be repeating the hour-long show at Chetham’s to celebrate International Women’s Day (8 March 2022). Designed along the lines of a pop set, it features a series of short original pieces and arrangements from various eras. Among the composers represented are contemporary figures like Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres and Anna Meredith. The programme also features Florence Price, the first African-American woman to have her music played by a major symphony orchestra, and Angela Morley, the British, Oscar-nominated transgender composer who died in 2009, having been among the earliest to have gender affirming surgery in the 1970s. Their repertoire goes right back to Hildegard von Bingen, one of the earliest of all known composers. ‘It’s our own arrangement and we’ve put electronics with it,’ Consta says of the latter. ‘I feel with the lighting it really takes you back to the early 1100s. It’s really cool.’

The day after the concert they will be holding workshops for Chetham’s students, before heading to London for another performance, this time hosted by noisenight, the new crowdfunded classical music club night series, at the OSO Arts Centre. While other projects emerge from the pipeline, they continue to use social media to release material, news and their takes on the classical music industry. Recent releases include video recordings of repertoire from the RSL Awards classical syllabus, in association with the awards and state51, and a live collaboration with CN Lester in Barbara Strozzi’s Lamento.

Although the group is run by Consta – ‘it’s just me and a laptop’ – she intends that Her Ensemble players will help shape its development. ‘We have a WhatsApp group for if there’s anything, they ask, or I ask. Basically, I wanted it to be run like a pop group or a band. I guess a difficulty, as well, is there’s quite a lot for me to juggle on my own so I do want to try and share out the jobs. But also, I don’t want it to become institutionalised. It won’t, because there’s so few of us, but I wanted it to be like a band and not a structured thing.’

An important part of that outlook is that the players are free to make the dress code their own. They will often use suits as a foundation, for the scope they offer for playing with gender stereotypes and for their visual impact when worn creatively, but without having their appearance tone-policed.

‘We’re playing music, which is art, but then we’re confined to such a small box. I don’t know how you can play genuinely – authentically is probably the better word – and feel like you can express yourself just as you want through music but have to cover your ankles. I don’t mind covering my ankles, I’m not opposed to it, but it seems really juxtaposed. It stems back to women’s bodies being sexualised, or parts of them being sexualised.’

As a result, they appear, in person or in photos and videos, as a group of people who are there on their own terms and in their own identities, representing the diverse nature of wider society not through calculation or pretence but by virtue of their individuality. It perhaps also represents a move away from the way the industry has prioritised modular musicians whose interchangeability is sometimes valued over the individual insights they may bring, even to orchestral contexts.

‘This period of time spent with my friends in the pop world, seeing them wearing whatever they wanted to wear, expressing themselves – it was such a completely different vibe. I was like: why do I have to cover my shoulders and my ankles? I think in the classical music world we like tradition. But where’s the cut-off point? Is it really necessary if it’s harmful to people?’

Her Ensemble appear at Stoller Hall in Manchester on 8 March and OSO Arts Centre, London on 12 March.

You can find out more about Her Ensemble here.