“Canadian composer Zosha di Castri is a prolific and wonderfully inventive creator who is currently the Francis Goelet Assistant Professor of Music at Columbia University and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. Di Castri’s latest project, “The Dream Feed: Musicians on Motherhood,” is a podcast series featuring insightful conversations between musician moms, centering on their shared experiences, challenges, and inspiration while balancing their identities and duties as both professional musicians and mothers. In “B-Side” episodes accompanying each interview, the performers share a jointly created duo and discuss what it was like to collaborate at a distance. Each woman offers a unique perspective of the musician-mother experience, and the first installment has featured violinist Olivia De Prato, composer Pauchi Sasaki, soprano/flutist Alice Teyssier, cellist Chloé Dominguez, and percussionist Aiyun Huang.
You describe motherhood as “one of the final “taboos” in the professional music world, with women often still believing they must choose between family and career or keep quiet about their desire for both. What led you to this conclusion, and how did it influence your path as you pursued both music and motherhood?
As a younger composer, I knew very few professional female composers and never had the opportunity to formally study with a woman. Most that I knew of didn’t have children, and older examples like Alma Mahler stopped writing with the arrival of their babies. With very few models to look to, and the already precarious financial reality of being a musician, the idea of pursuing both a career in music and a fulfilling family life seemed difficult…”
