In this Women’s History Month Spotlight, longtime AGMA member Karen Hogle Brown speaks with AGMA Communications Coordinator Eldad (Eldee) Eyimife about founding HERS Music Ensemble during the pandemic. What began as a moment of reflection during a global pause grew into a collaborative space where professional female singers and musicians could create work together rather than compete for a limited number of roles. In the conversation, Brown reflects on the challenges women face in the opera industry, the importance of expanding the canon to include more works by women composers, and how HERS aims to foster both artistic community and lasting structural change.
During the pandemic, the entire world came to a halt—opera houses closed their doors. Within that time of isolation, longtime AGMA member Karen Hogle Brown felt compelled to create a space where female singers could flourish despite physical and industry constraints.
“It’s both a community and an organization called HERS: Music Ensemble. We started during the pandemic, when we were all sent to our rooms to reflect,” she added humorously, “Many of us weren’t singing, which unexpectedly gave us space to think: Where are we in our careers? What do we truly want to do? What aren’t we doing that we wish we were?”
Even before the pandemic, Karen noticed how difficult it was for female professional singers to navigate intense competition and a very limited number of available jobs. She felt that the challenge was steeper for women than for some of her male counterparts.
“I’ve been an AGMA member for a long time—since around 2001, when I first joined as part of the LA Master Chorale. I joined them in 2000 and received a SACE contract the very next year, and I’ve been a member ever since. I’ve worked on several productions with both LA Opera and the LA Master Chorale. In the AGMA choruses at LA Opera and the LA Master Chorale, I’m surrounded by phenomenal singers. I truly admire my colleagues. But the reality is, we’re often all competing for the same roles and opportunities. Personally, I would much rather be singing alongside these incredible women than competing against them. That led me to a key question: “How can we create more opportunities for collaboration instead of reinforcing harmful standards?”
She reached out to friends in the industry—singers, instrumentalists, composers, and conductors—posing the same question. All of them shared similar frustrations: competing for a tiny pool of jobs and feeling highly replaceable, which made them hesitant to speak up, question the status quo, or challenge those in power; a vulnerability that could be exploited in many ways. So they revised the question and started asking: “Once we can sing and play together again, what should that look like? How can we make it more collaborative and tell stories together?” From this need, HERS was born.
HERS held its first performance in October 2023 at Occidental College, where Karen teaches. The evening featured works by composer Reena Esmail, such as The Quarantine Madrigals (text by Amy Fogerson – also an AGMA member), which is a piece for four soprano (or 4 of the same voice type)—an uncommon setup—and was performed entirely by AGMA members from the Master Chorale. Also included was a new arrangement and staged/choreographed version of Esmail’s The History of Red, which was later professionally recorded with The Darshan Trio, and to date has been viewed over 80,000 times on YouTube, a clear sign, Karen says, that audiences crave this kind of work.
HERS welcomes all professional-level artists, both emerging and established, and the programming is intentional. In an opera world dominated by a small set of canonical works—the same Mozarts, Puccinis, and Verdis—Karen sees the lack of women composers as a structural problem with real consequences.
“I read an article that there are fewer performances of operas by women composers worldwide each year than performances of Wagner operas alone. If that’s even close to accurate, it’s staggering. Every time we include a female perspective—whether in composition, staging, or storytelling—we tend to see greater representation: more diversity in gender, race, class, sexuality, and life experience on stage.”
HERS programs reflect this: recitals featuring works by women composers, concerts pairing popular arias by male composers with lesser-known works by women, and evenings centered on strong female characters in opera. The goal, Karen explains, is to expand the canon, demonstrating that works by women can stand confidently alongside the “greats.”
Beyond performances, HERS is building infrastructure for lasting change. The organization plans to become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit within the year. A core part of their mission is data transparency—such as asking our organizations to share information, such as how many singers of each voice type a company hires annually, versus how many of that voice type apply, along with any pay differences between genders hired. Karen believes that providing concrete data to both singers and institutions is transformative. Plus, making that info more public may prompt a much-needed reevaluation of hiring practices and pay disparities.
Through HERS, Karen Hogle Brown is redefining how women interact with one another and with their art. She hopes for a future where the structural imbalances she has spent her career navigating simply no longer exist—where a soprano walks into an audition room with the same odds as a tenor to be hired, and where the next generation of female artists never has to internalize the quiet, corrosive belief that they are replaceable. Learn more at hersmusic.org.