MU strikes deal with Black Lives in Music
OrchestrasProceeding from a recognition that ‘less than 2% of orchestra musicians in the UK are from an ethnic minority’, the Musicians Union has agreed a series of remedial measures with the Association of British Orchestras and the pressure group Black Lives in Music.
The new plan aims to level the playing field through a range of actions, including revising audition processes, maximising trial periods and providing inclusivity training for audition panellists.
The full plan includes:
1 Regular open calls for Extras and Deputies
2 Inclusion of impartial external member(s) on audition panels (without voting rights)
3 All candidates required to audition before being offered a trial (candidates will not be invited to trial without prior involvement in full recruitment process)
4 Screened early round auditions
5 First round, (proper) auditions with both in person and online options
6 First main round auditions to include an unaccompanied/accompanied work and reasonable number of excerpts
7 Audition panellists to receive inclusivity training within the 3 month period prior to recruitment duties
8 Streamlined trial process: maximum trial period of 2 years for tutti and principal positions (appointments to be confirmed within 3 months of completion of all trials)
9 All audition panels to keep a thorough and robust record of auditions and decisions during the trial process; candidates should be assessed using a clearly defined scoring framework alongside a documented and robust anecdotal narrative
10 Anonymised application process.
Your thoughts?
A bit of an insult to established high profile players in similar positions not to proceed directly to trial!
Dame Kathryn McDowell at the LSO is pushing this agenda. Despite the abilities of the players, she is also suggesting older players leave. The MU are feint hearted in ageist discrimination but diversity and inclusion trumps everything else. It all comes down to bring able to play, whatever creed nor color. The ABO give no help whatsoever.
It’s all very well to throw out players the second they reach retirement age but the LSO offers no company pension whatsoever and the state pension is insufficient….
You mean all the high-profile players who sit on their laurels for a living? Nope, they must prepare a classical concerto up to standard just like everyone else.
I thought we should all be judged solely on merit.
Why should someone go directly to trial just because they are older.
Nonsense.
What is “inclusivity training”?
It this era’s version of a Maoist “struggle session.”
One is tied to a chair in a darkened room, and shown slides of pictures of diverse people. An electronic device, fastened on the skull and equiped with ultra-sensitive sensors, monitors any negative thought being invoked, upon which a voice from two large loudspeakers gravely pronounces ‘Bad… bad… you are a bad person….’. The training is based upon a behaviorist research project at the Texas Institute of Technology. As Dr Hofstadter, leader of the project, stated in an article of the Dallas Inquirer on 17th June 2023: “We have found that after ca. 10 sessions the patient can no longer distuinguish between normal and diverse people, and of course that is a great improvement in the social context of any professional field, and especially in the field of classical music performance which, as we know, is rife with too much attention directed at diverse musicians and where diverse music is seriously underrepresented.”
Have you been reading “A clockwork orange” perchance?
Alas fruit is not allowed in the library here.
Sally
I think you know very well.
All of this seems to turn the problem of discrimination into a political one, while we know that rule enforcement mostly create new problems because they remain on the outside: they often result in ‘inverted’ discrimination and confusion of concepts and terms. Mentality problems are on the inside, an educational approach may be better.
Like, now you get concerts with ‘black music’ and conductors being celebrated for being black, bypassing quality matters.
Discrimination is a political problem.
Do you think that that the reason “2% of orchestra musicians in the UK are from an ethnic minority” is because ethnic minorities are inherently unskilled musicians or have no interest in performing, or maybe that funding for music education doesn’t equitably flow to these communities? How many public schools in poor communities do you think have outstanding music programs?
Where does it say that standards are being lowered?
‘How many public schools in poor communities do you think have outstanding music programs?’
As this concerns UK presumably you mean state schools, but anyway if these schools have poor music provision then won’t that affect white pupils as well?
Not only does race and poverty correlate, what we see in North America and European Countries countries is that poverty among minorities is highly concentrated, while white communities are more economically diverse — meaning, poor whites are more likely than poor minorities to live in a middle or upper-middle class community and enjoy the benefits from that, like schools with funding for the arts. And that’s why poor whites have greater economic mobility than their minority peers.
That is very true.
The extent to which such social obstacles are due to discrimination however, is very hard to establish, since there are many different parameters in play which may overlap and take place inside peoples’ mind.
Some of these ideas sound good but some others won’t have any affect on hiring more Black musicians.
Yes, and let’s start by applying these very criteria to the only racially-exclusive orchestra in the United Kingdom, founded by Chi Chi Ngwoko, whose proudly smiling picture appears at the head of this item.
It is by no means racially exclusive, as anyone will see if they take the trouble to attend their concerts.
Stories go round on antisocial media that these players are using whiteface make-up.
‘Stories go round’.
Well, there we go.
Only because they can’t find an ethnically appropriate player. You only have to listen to that orchestra to work out it’s second rate and let’s not start on their trumpet soloist at last years Proms. Only there due to skin colour. Wynton Marsalis he is not!
Everyone knows minorities can’t make on their own in music without help. The MU will “level the playing field” (where have we read that before). How condescending…
Rather insulting, no? You don’t have to pass an exam to get into music; spare me the sanctimony about this undermining “merit.” People get jobs because they know the concertmaster (“Leader” over in the UK), went to school with the 3rd horn, or, as has been discussed here in numerous places, some sexual impropriety was involved.
A clearly delineated protocol is in everybody’s interest, if they have musical rather than networking ability.
Let’s meet halfway. Give minorities the exact same protocols as all the Asians in orchestras received. Can’t get more fair than that.
Where in this protocol is anything other than that suggested? If it didn’t come from “Black Lives in Music” would you or anyone have batted an eye?
The implied racism argument.
That dog don’t hunt anymore.
Try Occam’s razor instead of these banal conspiracy theories.
Could it just be that someone didn’t get the job because they weren’t good enough?
Apply that logic to all the all-male orchestras you see in archive footage…
The clue’s in the word: archive.
Perhaps Black people are simply not cut out for European classical music. And that’s fine. How many White Europeans can play jazz like they can?
It’s OK to stay in your lane.
‘Not cut out’
‘Stay in your lane’
Nice to see we now just say the (racist) quiet bits out loud now on this site.
It is simply impossible to find-out exactly why someone is hired and another person not. That goes for any job.
We know from the Soviet experiment that producing an ideal society and force people to conform to ideal behavior ends in terrible disasters.
In some cases it’s actually very clear why someone got hired and someone else didn’t. People don’t want to talk about this, especially those in Chicago, but there are auditions that are absolutely rigged. This was already openly discussed by insiders decades ago. What makes things more painful for the “losers” is that those involved in the corruption will swear up and down that the auditions are legit. Granted, some are, but not all.
It is actually simply very possible to find out exactly why someone is hired in an orchestra in many situations.
And it doesn’t go for any job.
What I find incredible about this website and its posters is that article after article reveal how the classical music field is anything but a meritocracy, that there is frequent opaque decision making by management, nepotism scandals (remember the CSO concertmaster’s daughter in the orchestra who was fired for lying about why she needed PTO?), ramped sexism, etc., but then in these threads, people insist that orchestras are the most fair and equitable organizations, that there’s no discrimination at play with the fact that only 2 percent of orchestra members are a racial minority.
The problem of racial minorities lies outside music life, it is a problem of society. The constitution of orchestras is simply a reflection of conditions in society. So it has to be solved in society, not in orchestras, because the obvious danger is that quota thinking and virtue signalling get in the way of attempts to maintain quality standards.
There is no objective way of measuring artistic quality standards, because it is too subjective in nature, for instance: it is very hard to decide whether some criticism of a player is due to his/her bad performance or skin colour. So, invervening with objective attempts to rectify injustice in a very subjective area gets nowhere.
This does not mean orchestras are by their nature perfect ensembles of ideal human behavior, but that looking at them through a social justice lens will do more harm than good. Stimulate a better awareness and a better social group mentality may be more effective.
That’s a word salad of gibberish.
Orchestras are not so unique.
In every industry, the people doing the hiring unconsciously prefer candidates who are similar to them, whether it’s race, gender, where they went to school, hobbies, etc. That’s the reason why so many employers try to make some component of the hiring blind.
If most of the people at an organization or in a sector are white, it’s going to be very hard for nonwhites to break in because of this bias. Same deal with organizations and sectors that are dominated by men.
That’s the reason for having greater intentionality with hiring diverse candidates.
Wishful thinking doesn’t change reality. For example, even if I wish that the lions in the lion habitat at my local zoo were friendly cartoon characters, this would not change the fact that those lions will most likely kill me if I entered their space. I have simply witnessed too much violence coming from certain ethnic groups. Many times this is not even provoked yet the blame is always placed on White people for being racist. Well, if we “Mighty Whities” were truly racists then why do East Asians thrive in our societies? This is something that no one wants to answer because the truth might be that Blacks, as a group, fall way behind other groups of people in certain areas. The avoidance of this truth is what is really causing so much pain in the world.
I’ve completely lost respect from certain record labels that are trying to increase album sales by turning their catalog into Skittles.
“why do East Asians thrive in our societies”
Probably the biggest elephant in the room when discussing relative achievement.
(I’d add Hindus and Sikhs from S Asia to that question.)
That is very standard in basically all other fields. Having clear guidelines reduces the potential for bias and insider preferential treatment. What’s different here?
So a bunch of would-be pencil pushers (earning their chunk of the small amount of money given to the “arts” in this country) got into a room and decided to write down a bunch of stuff that we already do. Well done guys. I hope you all have long careers while the rest of us musicians contemplate retraining.
Actually, no – this framework was developed by musicians and orchestra staff from across the sector together, to try and support diversity and inclusivity in music in all its forms (not just visible diversity).
Of cou rse true blind auditions ends all this. A blind audition favors musical ability without color, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or gender. Forcing an ensemble to take musicians who are potentially not as good as other potential applicants for a position based upon the color of their skin to meet a quota is absurd. Let the cream rise to the top.
I got my job because of my good looks and nobody ever complained about that. Yes some people do but they don’t count. And yes I was fired sereval times but every job has its minusses next to the plusses.
Sally
Take off the “Black Lives in Music” headline and what’s the issue here? It’s a recipe for transparency and arms-length dealings.
I don’t know how things operate in the UK, but in other places people often get gigs because they know the right person. This, as we say on my side of the pond, looks like an effort to “Level the playing field.”
Many members of the ABO ( ECO, Britten Sinfonia, Aurora, ASMF etc) consist of infrequent rather poorly paid work by giggling musicians. Who is going to pay them for their time whilst they are “ inclusivity trained”?
Levelling the playing field= lowering standards through political ideology. Here’s my solution:
Work hard, get the job through merit and stop complaining.
That’s what this protocol calls for. If you read the text and not Norman’s headline.
Even Point Seven? Inclusivity training? What’s that supposed to mean?
Maybe don’t be a racist, sexist pig. Don’t rape your new untenured colleague? Don’t close ranks around a rapist? Don’t perpetuate an old boy network?
@OSF: You have a very fertile imagination which says more about your obsessions than anything else.
If you weren’t so blinded by your own political ideology, you’d see it’s actually partly about stopping nepotism and teachers bringing in their own mates and students.
If you were blind to this during your own orchestral days, then you were likely part of the problem.
What is the complaints process if this criteria is not met? Where does one seek help after a failed audition with no external panel member for example.
Or left on trial for years….not in a position to complain to anyone are you?
Ridiculous. One more example of how the UK society is succumbing to the woke garbage. England is barely recognizable anymore. Just a bunch of bloody gutless wankers.
I’d like to know a little more about that alleged 2%.
The Philharmonia, for instance, is clearly more that that but probably not the “right” kind of ethnic minority.
This is all getting rather stupid. Forty-four years ago I was at university doing a halfway-house course between performance and theory/history. To give you an idea of the level, the resident string quartet was the Guadagnini (Paul Silverthorne, John Chillingworth etc), replaced by the Medici in 1982 or so; the piano teachers were Craig Sheppard and Heather Slade-Lipkin, the list goes on. There was a black pianist from Nottingham in my year. He was excellent. End of. No-one banged on about ‘how wonderful it was that he’d been given a chance’ etc; he was just very good. A few years later, a fellow student – the conducting fellow attached to the Opera Department at the RCM – was a woman, who went on to have a significant career, being the first woman to conduct the VPO (at the Salzburg Festival) as well as many other top-grade posts. As no-one was actively promoting women conductors at the time, but she was just excellent and earned all the success she reaped. The period was colour and gender-blind: if you had it, you’d make it. The patronising guff swirling around the swarthy and female these days just makes me want to retch.
Ah, yes, the ‘one black person’ and the ‘one woman’ flying the flag in a sea of homogeny.
Can’t believe we are at this level of thinking among professional musicians.
They aspired and they made it. End of story. No legs up, no legs over, just talent and hard work. Over to you.
Yes, it’s about time they stopped GIFTING Trials to people who can’t play in tune but have “been around long enough”. Same should go fir Guest Principals.
Recently listened to a record called “Bach to Black” by a black female pianist named Rochelle Sennet, who is the head of DEI at the uni where she teaches. She interspersed the Bach keyboard partitas with piano suites by black composers. Sennet is a competent enough pianist. She doesn’t massacre Bach but neither does she have anything particularly illuminating to “say” about his music, much like, say, Andras Schiff. What I did find illuminating about listening to Bach back-to-back with black composers (that was fun to write) is how poorly the latter fare by being juxtaposed with music that is on an entirely different plane of existence. I’m sure she meant well with her endeavor, and it should be commended to some degree, but what she inadvertently accomplished was to show beyond a shadow of a doubt that these black composers have absolutely no business inhabiting the same platform as Bach, and that the classical canon exists for a very good reason, indeed. In the end, the cream always rises to the top, and I find solace in the knowledge that, once we have traversed these Maoist times and find ourselves on the other side, true talents will eventually prevail, regardless of their race, sex or whatever other identity box the tiresome identitarians try to divide us into.
Nice condescending review, but what does that have to do with orchestral auditions in the UK?
Among the many faculties we have lost through the dumbing-down of the culture and academia is the ability to discern implicit meaning. Sad.
To be fair, few composers come out well in a back-to-back comparison with Bach.
Well, yes, of course. I did mean to write that. But programming vastly lesser talents alongside Bach – regardless of their race – strikes me as a supremely foolish choice, however well-intentioned it may be.
‘less than 2% of orchestra musicians in the UK are from an ethnic minority’
This is palpable nonsense.
What is the definition of “ethnic minority”? A cursory read through the performers on stage in the programme as well as the evidence of your own eyes would prove the 2% is way below the correct figure.
If you look at the Musicians’ Union page in question,
https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/mu-blim-and-abo-launch-landmark-agreement-to-diversify-uk-orchestras
you see it quotes an
“Equality and Diversity in the Classical Music Profession” (2015) report
which in turns references an obscure article (I can’t find it on Google)
“McClure, Kokot and Scharff, 2014”, where it says claims the figure of 1.7% from a survey of 629 players in 17 orchestras. So this new plan is being launched on the basis of a 10-year old article which used what looks a ridiculously small sample.
Concerning ‘ethnic minorities’, does the report include Jews and Asians? Both are ethnic minorities in the UK, but generally very motivated and talented (hence their success).
There seems to be an assumption behind this sort of project that the % participation by ethnicity in any form of artistic endeavour should match the % breakdown of ethnicities in the overall population.
Is such an assumption justified?
Doesn’t apply to many sporting endeavours though.
Can’t imagine why not ………….
Is such an assumption not justified?
@PB: No. Horses for courses.
Is there any actual evidence of any actual discrimination?