Women fill the top spots in Washington's classical music world

In a world of old-boy bastions, classical music's has been particularly entrenched. Even today, conductors are generally male, and female composers are chronically underrepresented on the orchestral stages of the world. The picture is brighter in administration, but even there the glass ceiling is not far behind us; the women who helped break it, like Deborah Borda, now the president and CEO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, are still active in the field. Catherine French, now a prominent headhun...