Presidential handover

As Deborah Keyser comes to the end of her year as President of the ISM and Vick Bain takes office, both women talk to Clare Stevens about their careers in music, the issues that matter most to them, and their perspectives on the ISM

Above: Clare Stevens Photo: Bruce Childs

Above: Deborah Keyser Left (top): Artist in workshops for CoDI Lead, Ty ^ Cerdd’s new disabled-led composerdevelopment pathway Left: Tumi Williams aka Skunkadelic Photos: Matthew Thistlewood It may be more than 100 years since the first women were granted the right to vote in UK parliamentary elections but progress towards their equal representation in public life has been slow. The ISM however has always been ahead of its time. In 1884, just two years after it was founded, it opened up membership to women. Today it continues to be a forward-thinking organisation and one that champions women. It is unusual to have a largely female leadership team, a female chief executive officer (CEO) in Deborah Annetts, and women currently in post – Deborah Keyser – and incoming – Vick Bain – in the role of President.

Both Keyser and Bain are champions for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in every aspect of the music business and beyond. In this feature, our outgoing President and President-Elect tell us how they built their own careers before moving on to look at their work with the ISM and how the organisation will evolve in future.

Deborah Keyser

Welsh born and bred, Deborah Keyser studied music at Cardiff University and postgraduate at Goldsmiths’ College (University of London), where she was part of the last cohort of graduates of the National Centre for Orchestral Studies. ‘It was an extraordinary experience,’ she recalls, ‘being a violinist with a young training orchestra, being conducted by people like Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Sir Charles Groves and Sian Edwards – she was absolutely top notch – but do you know, this was back in 1989 and she was the only woman who conducted us the whole time.’

As a new graduate living in London, Keyser spent a short time building a typical musician’s portfolio career, working as a peripatetic instrumental teacher alongside freelance playing, prior to two jobs with the BBC, working for Radio 3 and then BBC Music magazine, and a period in orchestral management and opera production.

‘I managed the Brunel Ensemble for a few years, alongside artistic director Christopher Austin, commissioning composers, working a lot with brand new music and living music creators,’ she says. ‘It was really fantastic.’

In 2005 Keyser took up a role at Creu Cymru, the development agency for theatres and arts centres across Wales, later becoming its director. She also worked on the Vale of Glamorgan Festival, is still on its management board and that of the International Association of Music Centres, and is a Trustee of Anthem Music Fund Wales, Sinfonia Cymru and Presteigne Festival.

Since 2016, Keyser has been CEO of Ty ^ Cerdd, the national agency for promoting the music of Wales. The name means ‘House of Music’ and the organisation has a very wide remit, working with composers and music-creators, societies and performing groups across Wales, offering them artistic expertise and promotional support, and helping them to connect with composers and audiences.

Does Keyser’s role at the head of this organisation feel like a natural culmination of her career, drawing on all the skills and knowledge she has gained in a range of jobs, involving many different musical genres and allowing her to support participation at every level in her home country?

‘Yes, it absolutely does,’ she says. ‘This opportunity came up at a time when I wasn’t particularly planning on moving on, but I was working with theatres and arts centres and music was just part of their programmes, it wasn’t the focus. I realised that actually music was the place I really wanted to be, and I haven’t looked back, it’s brilliant.’

Previous experiences are proving to be invaluable, such as an unforgettable collaboration between the Brunel Ensemble and pop band The Divine Comedy.

‘That gave me a glimpse of working on the other side of the tracks, if you like, which has been very useful for Ty ^ Cerdd and also my ISM work, because increasingly musicians are not putting themselves in one box.

Read our annual review of the ISM, ISM Trust and ISM Members Fund on pages 16, 22 and 24 respectively

Right: Artists in workshops for CoDI Lead, Ty ^ Cerdd’s new disabled-led composerdevelopment pathway Photos: Matthew Thistlewood Younger artists in particular now have incredibly diverse careers; most of them are probably working not just across musical genres but in a range of art forms. At Ty ^ Cerdd we are very aware of that; our artist development work, central to what we do, has become very artist-led.’

What this means, Keyser explains, is that while sometimes they will offer an opportunity that is primarily for, say, composers working with notated music, more usually they issue a much more open invitation, offering music creators from any background a chance to develop their craft. ‘It’s been a wonderful lesson for us at Ty ^ Cerdd, watching how musicians with very different training, sometimes no formal training at all, collaborate and learn from one another; finding out that if you give artists the power they will make their own way. We’re putting many fewer boundaries and descriptions around artists and work.’

The organisation is a marriage between the Welsh Music Information Centre, a repository of scores and information originally housed at Cardiff University, and the Welsh Amateur Music Federation. It is now based at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff. Not long before Keyser took up her post, Arts Council Wales (ACW) changed the nature of lottery funding for nonprofessional organisations to make it more strategic; the pandemic necessitated another recalibration.

‘We now have three really clear opportunities for which people involved with any genre of music can apply: making new work; engaging with audiences and participants; and Inspire, supporting work with under-26s. They are small grants, really accessible, and we now deliver just under £150k worth a year. That’s double what we used to deliver before the pandemic and we’ve got a much more diverse and interesting range of organisations making use of it.

‘Alongside that, our chair Steph Power and I decided that having a membership organisation felt wrong, it was jarring with our purpose and mission; so three years ago we dissolved the membership, obviously took a loss of income, and became an open network. Anyone can sign up to be part of it, we’re just here to work with artists and audiences. We still have our hire library, our research facility, a recording operation that people can hire and which we use to produce our own recordings of music by Welsh performers and composers, and our recital space with its beautiful piano. But we have opened things up for the board and staff to engage with a new community of music-makers, some of whom may have been excluded from support and engagement in the past.’

Keyser herself lives in the small town of Llandovery, Carmarthenshire, and is keenly aware of the needs of rural communities. As an example of Ty ^ Cerdd’s work beyond the capital she enthuses about Tapestri, a new programme of work which is intended to be a digital living music archive: ‘Our archive and the archive at the National Library of Wales are remarkable, but also remarkable for what they don’t contain – they are pretty monocultural. This will be loads of threads of different communities and languages and people and their music across Wales.

‘We’re currently in the pilot phase of three threads, including working with learning-disabled musicians, helping them to express their creativity, in a beautiful project inspired by Sonic Bothy in Glasgow – our partners for that are the William Mathias Music centre in Caernarfon and Touch Trust in Cardiff; Affricerdd, which involves commissioning artists of African descent based in Wales to create new work, including songs in any language which we translate into Welsh and English; and Perisgop a project where composer Gareth Churchill and writer Kate O’Reilly, both of whom have sight loss, worked with the sight loss community in Wales on making a film about their experiences during COVID-19.

‘There have been misconceptions about our remit,’ she adds, ‘especially among young people, who perceive Welsh music as being all about dead people, mostly white and mostly male, harps and male voice choirs, and not for them. We’re aiming to disprove that and embrace different cultures and genres.

‘Ty ^ Cerdd’s slogan is, “If you’re making music in Wales, it’s Welsh music”.’

Vick Bain

Vick Bain currently combines freelance consultancy with PhD research into women’s careers in music at Queen Mary University, London. A former CEO of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, (BASCA) now the Ivors Academy, she is an expert on all aspects of diversity in the music and creative industries. She was enrolled into the Music Week Women in Music Roll of Honour in 2017 and in 2018 featured on the BBC Radio Four Women’s Hour Power List of Women in Music.

Bain is the author of Counting the Music Industry, a gender gap analysis of over 300 music publishers and record labels in the UK. This research reveals that just over 14% of writers currently signed to publishers and just under 20% of acts signed to labels are female. The gender gap is surprisingly large and Bain believes it is indicative of widespread discrimination against women in the music industry , especially in the crucial early years after they leave university. She is also the founder of The F-List for Music, an online directory of the UK’s female and gender-expansive musicians, and is a trustee of Parents and Carers in Performing Arts (PiPA) and a board director of music-collaboration platform Delic.

Growing up in the north-east of England, Bain’s primary musical enthusiasm was for singing. Her musical horizions were expanded by a period living in Florida, where she attended high school and had her first professional acting and singing roles. Returning to the UK she found her American high school diploma was not accepted by British universities, so rather than embark upon an A-level course she did a BTech in Performing Arts and then a Higher National Diploma in classical music at Newcastle College, followed by a degree in Music and Performing Arts at Gateshead College.

‘Nowadays that area is totally transformed and there is a whole ecosystem between the Sage Gateshead, Newcastle University, Northumbria University and Gateshead College, but at that time there was very little regional infrastructure to support a career in music, so as soon as I graduated I packed all my bags into a van and moved to London.’

Bain developed an interest in experimental music as well as singing and expected to make a living as a full-time performer, or perhaps in music therapy; but as a student she began to realise that her primary skills were in organising and managing other people.

‘I ended up directing all the shows that we put on; I was also President of my Student Union, so right from my early 20s I had that campaigning side to me as well, and by the time I graduated I had realised that probably my strengths would be in the business side of things. In London I realised that I was not going to be able to earn enough money to support myself fully from performing, so I set about understanding the music business. I got a job in the classical music department of the Royal Festival Hall (RFH) and thought, this is it, I can see my career path! One day I’ll end up running the RFH! That was my initial ambition – I’ve always been very ambitious.’

Fate then intervened as Bain found herself the single parent of twins, and was forced to take a temporary step back from her career. With no local family support, she initially found it impossible to juggle childcare with work. ‘That was very tough,’ she says. ‘After two years I was desperate for work.

‘Luckily a friend was setting up his own business, an audio-visual company doing visuals for bands on tour, and asked me to do light-touch office management. That was enough to enable me to get my kids into the Margaret MacMillan Nursery School in Crouch End – the headmistress said felt sorry for me! As soon as I had my foot in the door again I very quickly built up my freelance work and my hours, and then I was away. It just took that one step.’

Unlike some new parents, Bain didn’t feel any loss of identity or confidence in her own skills during those years that were dominated by childcare. On the contrary, she says the experience gave her confidence: ‘I knew that bringing up twins on my own was the hardest thing I would ever do, so I thought to myself, if I can do this, I can do anything.’

She trained in bookkeeping and set up a freelance company, the Creative Support Agency – the CSA acronym an intentional ironic reference to the Child Support Agency – and ended up building up a roster of clients in the creative industries. ‘I helped them with finance management, bookkeeping, troubleshooting, setting their systems up and then bringing in other staff to look after them. I was really busy and very surprised that I turned out to be good at this sort of thing.’

One of her clients was BASCA; Bain’s role with them developed into a part-time job as Financial Controller, then when the organisation invited her to become full-time Chief Operating Officer she persuaded them to let her do a part-time MBA. She had just graduated when the CEO left and Bain was asked to take on the role.

Over six years at BASCA she launched a high-profile campaign to get better remuneration for song-writers from digital platforms and was part of the team that defeated the government, overturning the private Copyright Exemption legislation, before focusing on her passion: diversity in music.

Alongside her burgeoning professional life as a businesswoman, Bain stayed in touch with her musical roots by singing with the London Bulgarian Choir. ‘As soon as I was able to arrange a regular babysitter I would go off and rehearse with them. I am very interested in world music and was intrigued by their unusual sound. We did very well one year in the BBC Choir of the Year Competition and when we did a tour of Bulgaria I brought my children with me … that was an experience to remember!’

Above: Vick Bain

Right: Vick Bain (second from right) taking part in a panel discussion with Girls I Rate, a platform for women to empower one another Photo: Carla Marie Williams @ GirlsIRate

Her MBA dissertation was on equality and diversity, exploring attitudes in the music business. Gender diversity is one particular focus, she says, ‘because I’m a cis woman, but also, because I came from a working-class background in the north-east, social class. That has informed my entire career pathway, and in London I see the effects of differences in social class a lot, especially in the creative industries, where research published last year demonstrated that people from privileged backgrounds are more than twice as likely to get jobs. Those are my chief concerns, but for my PhD I’m looking at all the factors that impact upon women’s career progression in the music business; it’s very intersectional research.’

Her own experience as a single parent working in the music industry drew her to PiPA, which was created by actor Cassie Raine and director Anna Ehnold-Danailov in 2015, to address a lack of provision for parents and carers in the performing arts. ‘They are doing wonderful work, because it is so difficult to be a parent or a carer in the creative industries. Careers are so precarious, work is not guaranteed, it’s such unsocial hours; all of those structures can form insurmountable barriers, and it is primarily women who can be negatively impacted, especially if they are single parents (90% of single parents are women). It was amazing to me to see this group of people coming up with solutions. PiPA started off in theatre and now they are moving into dance and music.

‘They are doing some research right now into what life is like for classical musicians who have caring responsibilities, not just for children but for sick or elderly relatives. There is a survey on their website which we’ve encouraged anyone working in this sector to complete.’

ISM’s first consecutive female presidents

For the first time in the ISM’s history the current President and the President Elect – are both female. Keyser joined the board of the ISM in 2019 and is about to complete her presidential year. She recalls joining the organisation to connect with members across the four nations: ‘I was keen to connect with people outside Wales, which can sometimes become a bit of a silo; we work very closely together as organisations but can get a bit wrapped up in what is happening in our country. I was really interested to keep the flow of information going across the border, and the ISM is good at doing this.’

Bain has been on the board of the ISM for two years. ‘The ISM is my main voluntary commitment; I wanted to give something back to the industry, and when I realised that the ISM is open to people who work in all sorts of roles in the music industry, not just performers, I wanted to join. I totally believe in collective action, help and support, and when you are working as a freelancer in the music industry, either as a creative or on the business side of things, where else do you get good insurance, good advice, a sense of community – all those really important things? It felt really natural to me to join the ISM, and it’s been such a positive experience.’

Both Bain and Keyser are also unique in that they have witnessed the ISM in action pre – during – and soon to be post-pandemic times. Since its founding in 1882 the ISM has existed to serve the music profession and has evolved as an organisation in tandem with the changing needs of members. It is arguable that this has never been tested more than during the last few years. Since joining Council, Bain has admired how Deborah Annetts has led the organisation and its membership through the pandemic. Bain became a board member just before the first lockdown and saw the ISM pivot to providing different types of support to members throughout the pandemic. Keyser, who was ISM President-Elect from April 2020, recalls the importance of adapting as an organisation.

‘The pandemic hit just as I was going into my period as President-Elect, and I was absolutely staggered at the way the ISM navigated through it – the unashamed focus on just supporting the sector, lobbying, getting information out there and making it open access. Not making money a barrier to membership, was so important, exactly what was needed; it was the right call and I was really proud to be involved with the ISM at that moment. I know that in the Welsh sector people have gone to the ISM pages to find out about guidelines and regulations. Then my term as President started last April, and we’ve been focusing on trying to be as effective as we can be. We learned so much from COVID and Brexit about musicians’ needs and we have been reflecting on what this means for the ISM, what it is has become, and how it can best serve the sector. It’s pushed us to challenge ourselves and our thinking with some big questions.’

Keyser also reflected on the way in which the ISM operates and noted that one of the ISM’s strengths as an organisation is its independence – both politically and financially – which is advantageous to the way

in which the organisation is run. The pandemic highlighted how valuable that independence is, as it enabled the interests of the profession to be kept front and centre throughout the pandemic. ‘I think the public affairs operation has been extraordinary. It’s an independent organisation, so it’s not tied by anything other than members’ fees and its membership, and I think that’s freeing.’

Bain echoes this sentiment: ‘I particularly like the fact that it’s politically independent, not connected to one political party or another, and that’s a very strong point when it comes to its lobbying work, it is one reason why it is so effective. As an organisation it has doubled in size under Deborah’s leadership which is amazing; yet there are definitely more people out there who could benefit from membership. People like me, freelance music professionals, to whom we could reach out by emphasising our modernness and our independence – and not just classical musicians, but people in other genres. We’re doing really well in jazz, but we could be drawing in more people across all pop, rock and non-western sectors.’

The ISM’s membership demographic changed during the pandemic as members diversified their portfolio of work to make ends meet and new recruits came from an ever-broader range of backgrounds, all of which raises questions about how the ISM operates post-pandemic to meet the needs of members and the wider profession. The ISM is open to all those who work professionally in the music sector and it’s vital that all musicians know the ISM is here for them. Anything that makes the ISM less effective in achieving that goal needs to be addressed. One such barrier that Bain highlighted is the name, and particularly the word ‘Incorporated’, which says nothing about the organisation or its values. ‘The Board is looking very carefully at that, we’re looking how we can be better … there would be real benefits in having a name that reflects who we are as an organisation. Watch this space. I’m looking forward to it all, and so proud to be involved with this unique organisation.’

Keyser also looked forward to the future of the ISM: ‘I think it is really exciting that the ISM is growing and changing, not standing still … it’s a really, really interesting time.’

As Bain plans for the year ahead, meeting ISM member needs is on her mind. ‘There are lots of challenges that the music sector is facing … COVID recovery, obviously, ensuring that as many musicians as possible can get back to work and back to performing in a safe way; Brexit which is, goodness me’ – Bain sighs deeply – ‘just such a nightmare. There’s so much government could be doing that they are resisting. I hope when we get to the other side of everything that is going on at the heart of government right now, some of them will begin to see sense in terms of visas, touring around Europe and so on, and bring some of those barriers back down. This is an advantage that the ISM has as an independent organisation: it can respond quickly to any issue that faces musicians or the music sector.

‘We will also be focusing on education,’ she adds. ‘Coming from a working-class background myself, I can see how music lessons have been taken away from so many working-class kids, it’s a great concern to me that music shouldn’t become the preserve of the middle classes. The ISM is fighting to keep music in the classroom as the only certain way to ensure that every child has access to music education.

‘Access to music lessons is only part of it. What I’d particularly like is to help support the ISM in its work around diversity – who is it who gets to work in music and why? I think music should be for all and if it’s just certain groups that can participate and flourish in music, that reduces the talent pool. The ISM is concerned not only with ensuring students have access to music education but also that the workforce is treated fairly. The work of the legal team in supporting ISM member Lesley Brazel in bringing a legal case against her employer, The Harpur Trust, around holiday pay to the Supreme Court reflects the tenacity the ISM is renowned for.’

Bain also plans to build upon the work that the ISM has already started, particularly in addressing inequalities within the profession. ‘The ISM has done some fantastic work in this field, such as the Dignity at Work report published in 2018. That was really great work, in an area that has not really been researched. It was followed up by creating and launching the Code of Practice with the MU, to help eradicate bullying, harassment and discrimination in the music sector, which organisations are continuing to sign up to today. This shows that the ISM are really leaders in this area and there needs to be more of it.’

As she enters her presidential year, Bain says she is very aware that the ISM is nearing its 140th anniversary. ‘That is just amazing. The musical universe was a very different place when it was founded, but there were women joining the organisation from very early on, which is extraordinary when you think that it was at a time when they weren’t even allowed to study music at university. But despite its age it’s incredibly modern, it has kept up with modern trends and I’m looking forward to being part of this journey over the next year.’ See ism.org/news/ brazel-case-reachesthe-supreme-court

Deborah Keyser tycerdd.org Vick Bain Vbain.co.uk The F-List for Music thef-listmusic.uk Parents and Carers in Performing Arts: Pipacampaign.org