Screen or No Screen

Whether or not orchestras and other ensembles should use audition screens when hiring musicians has been up for debate ever since the tradition of blind auditions was normalised in orchestras from the 1970’s. The screen has evidently reduced sex-biased hiring and increased the number of female musicians. But Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times’s chief classical music critic, recently wrote an essay arguing that blind auditions were no longer tenable. The screen had been transformative for gender representation, he said, but not for racial diversity. You can find his essay, and a response from a few conductors, musicians and administrators in the music industry, here:

• To Make Orchestras More Diverse, End Blind Auditions by Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, July 16 2020
  
• Musicians on How to Bring Racial Equity to Auditions, interviews by Zachary Woolfe and Joshua Barone for The New York Times, 10 September 2020

Programming 

Anthony Tommasini has not only made a statement regarding screens, he also has (personal and quite radical) suggestions to how orchestras may introduce more diversity in their programming. Others suggest that introducing improvisation to classical orchestras is the way to move forward in classical music:

• Notes Toward Reinventing the American Orchestra by Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, February 12, 2021
  
• Orchestras Looking to Broaden Horizons? Start Improvising by Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times, 25 August 2020

Moving Forward

It does seem like many musical institutions are recognising that the industry still has a diversity problem. Some orchestras are well on their way in making a change and some are even hiring their own diversity officers to increase the number of minority people on the staff and board, broaden their programming and address the pattern of systemic discrimination:

• For Diversity Leaders in the Arts, Getting Hired Is Just the First Step by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, 17 January 2021
  
• The Metropolitan Opera Hires Its First Chief Diversity Officer by Joshua Barone, The New York Times, 25 January 2021.

The first step towards change is first of all to recognise that a problem exists, and then be willing to discuss the matter. LGBTQ+ representation in classical music is rarely talked about, but the Canadian Opera Company recently initiated this event discussing gender and opera, available here:

• Gender & Opera / LGBTQ+ representation, Canadian Opera Company on YouTube, 06 March 2021

Most of the articles and interviews on our list are American in origin. One may say that the rest of the world remains a bit behind in implementing change, but things are starting to move in Europe as well. For example, The BBC Concert Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic are among the 40 organisations who have signed up to I’M IN — the world’s first diversity and inclusion audit tool for the music industry – meaning that they have committed to a diversity audit in a bid to help more people from Black, Asian and working-class backgrounds into classical music.

Chineke! is a foundation and orchestra, created to provide support and opportunities to black and ethnically diverse classical musicians in the UK and Europe. Their work includes proposing the formation of a grant-giving alliance to fund auditions for ethnically diverse musicians.

Yet, in spite of a spoken desire for progress, we still have a long way to go before we are able to see real changes in diversity in the music industry.  For women in music in general, equality still remains out of reach to a large extent in spite of the number of initiatives that have been undertaken to address underlying problems. Aiming for inclusion, diversity, equality and accessibility for all should be on the agenda for everyone working in the arts. Leading by example may be a good way to start.