This Week at San Francisco Symphony.

Bassoonist Joshua Elmore, left; Percussionist Stan Muncy, right.

Photo courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

I reported on the appointment of Joshua Elmore as principal bassoon and Stan Muncy as section percussionist, as well as reviewing last night's banger of a program:

• S.F. Symphony appoints first Black principal in decades
• S.F. Symphony’s newly appointed principal Joshua Elmore solos in a thrilling performance
  

Various details that I could not fit into my review:

• Daniil Trifonov's encores were Samuel Barber, Mvt II from Piano Sonata, Op. 26, and Prokofiev, Gavotte from Cinderella, Op. 95 No. 2
• Xavier Muzik used a mirrorless Fujifilm X-Pro3 digital camera and a vintage Yashica Electro 35 film camera, mostly with Kodak Gold film, for the photos in the slideshow accompanying Strange Beasts. 
• There was a brief pause between Parts I and II of The Rite of Spring, planned by Esa-Pekka Salonen. The pause was also for principal trombone Timothy Higgins and guest associate principal trombone Gracie Potter to change places so that Higgins could play bass trumpet trombone.

Elswhere:

• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center

Previously:

• Joshua Kosman on Salonen's first Rite of Spring performance with SFS. I completely agreed with him about the weirdly soft-focus Stravinsky on the program, which I didn't find effective.
• Joshua Kosman on timpanist Elayne Jones. As it happens, SFS had a Black player before Jones, bassist Charles Burrell. Subsequently, these Black musicians were members of the orchestra:
• Violist Basil Vendrys, now principal viola of the Colorado Symphony
• Bassoonist Rufus Olivier, now principal bassoon of the SF Opera and SF Ballet Orchestras
• Nicole Cash, former associate principal horn

 

Diversity in Opera

It's a common stance among U.S. classical music and opera lovers to wish that state and federal support  for the arts reached the levels of such support in Europe. I've thought for a while that this would be a double-edged sword: a government that gives money can take away that money. We're seeing the depredations of Arts Council England in the UK, where subsidies for many important organizations has been cut back and the English National Opera is being forced to decamp from London, where they've been performing for the last 80 years, first as Sadler's Wells Opera, then as the ENO.

Not that private philanthropists can't do the same, plus there's generational change about what the rich give to: these days, what's popular is donating huge sums to medical research or hospitals rather than the arts.

Regardless, one good thing about lack of government support means that there's not much to take away and an organization that's dedicated to expanding their repertory past dead white European men and to casting people of color in leading roles can't be pressured by the government to stop doing these things. (Here I'll note that San Francisco Opera's excellent productions of Omar and El ultimo sueño de Frida y Diego sold very well, and making your audiences happy is good.)

I was thinking about how racism manifests itself in the performing arts. There are all sorts of ways: thinking you can't cast Black men as romantic heroes, assigning fewer solos in concerts to singers of color, failing to admit singers of color to important training programs, the economic inequality that makes it easier for people with money than people without money to pay for music or voice lessons and buy good instruments, treating students of color differently, and on and on. 

Other than in Porgy and Bess, I did not see a production with more than one Black singer on stage until 2017! I've now seen enough productions with one to many Black or Asian singers to know that it's absolutely not for lack of good singers of color. And there are some outstanding Black singers I've seen in the last few years who didn't have careers at major U.S. opera houses until they were approaching or past 50.  I expect that most people reading this are aware that star singers are usually established by age 35, so that's a lot of prime earning years lost. 

DEI works the same way in the arts as anywhere else: expanding the pool of talent means you have more choices about who to hire, and generally results in quality going up. Having fewer mediocre white people in the corner suite or on stage benefits us all.

Articles of Interest

I've been meaning to link to these forever.

• After the Sheng Fiasco, Music and Arts Education Can No Longer Profess Color Blindness, by Loren Kajikawa, Daniel Martinez Hosang. AMS/Musicology Now.
• Confronting Our Complicity: Music Theory and White Supremacy, by Dave Molk. New Music USA
• Music Theory and the White Racial Frame, by Dr. Philip Ewell, MTO
• Journal of Schenkerian Studies: Proving the Point, by Dr. Megan Lavengood
• Black Scholars Confront White Supremacy in Classical Music, by Alex Ross, The New Yorker

There's plenty more out there on these topics.

Yes, There is Racism in Classical Music

It's 2021, and if there's anything that white people in the US should have learned in the last couple of years, it's that racism is pervasive and systemic across American society. It doesn't matter that any individual doesn't consider themselves racist or that any particular person doesn't behave in racist ways. That's what "systemic" means.

Here are some articles about this that have run in the Times recently, about what Asian and Asian-American musicians face in their lives and careers. It's especially dismaying that the only person of color on a DEI committee at San Francisco Symphony resigned from the committee. That tells you a lot about how effective and useful he thought the committee was.

• Asian Composers Reflect on Careers in Western Classical Music
  
• Asians Are Represented in Classical Music. But Are They Seen?
  
• A Violinist on How to Empower Asian Musicians
  

More:

• For These Classical Musicians, It’s Always Been About Racial Equity
  
• Opera Can No Longer Ignore Its Race Problem
  
• Classical Opera Has a Racism Problem (Not the same as the previous article, despite name similarities.)
  
• Opera Foundation Removes Trustee Over Offensive Comments
  
• Spreading the Word on Black Classical Music (This article is more than 30 years old.)
  

A Reminder from the Past

If you're tempted to tangle with Heather MacDonald, directly or indirectly, over her recent awful article (part 1 of 2!), I advise ignoring her. Folks with her beliefs can't be persuaded; the only reason to engage with her or what she writes is for bystanders.

Around ten years ago, she and Greg Sandow had a dust-up and Greg wound up writing five articles, a tremendous waste of his time. I wrote about that exchange myself and mentioned her here and here. Seriously, don't bother.

Shameless

Lincoln Center Plaza Fountain

Received from the Metropolitan Opera, a company that still hasn't performed a work by a Black person and has performed two works by women, a century apart:

In honor of Juneteenth, we are showcasing some of the exceptional African American artists who have thrilled audiences and made invaluable contributions to the Met’s legacy since Marian Anderson first broke the company’s color line in 1955. Don’t miss the Nightly Opera Stream of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, featuring the great Leontyne Price (pictured above) in one of her signature roles, available until tomorrow at 6:30PM EDT. You can also enjoy an audio compilation and a collection of video selections on our streaming service, Met Opera on Demand, until next Friday, June 26, as well as an interview with Price from the documentary The Opera House. 

I also note that, browsing through the gallery of Met Orchestra musicians, there are just two Black-presenting players.

Do better, Met.

This Made Me Wince, a Lot.

Before I get started on a tweet from the League of American Orchestras,  I do want to note that they have had a group of Black conductors speaking to them this week and they do seem to be making some efforts in the right direction -- but the cluelessness here is uh I don't know what to say.

The text of the tweet pictured above is: 

CEO Jesse Rosen of the League of American Orchestras: Events of past weeks have changed my own beliefs about the centrality of racism in our society, beyond other forms of discrimination. We have not yet figured out what this means for our org, or how to be good partners w/ respect to equity in resources.

I took a look at Rosen's page on the LAO web site, and gosh. He is a middle-aged white guy, pretty typical of orchestra and opera company executives.*

But he's not uneducated and probably he reads The NY Times and other major newspapers. How....can he have missed how central racism is? There are the basic historical facts that the European colonists started out by stealing the land that's now the United States from the indigenous people and also that a good chunk of the US economy was funded by enslaving African people who were kidnapped from their homes, tortured, raped, abused, bought and sold away from their families.

After that, I bury my head in my hands. The LAO has been collecting and publishing orchestra repertory reports for a long time. If you take some time to look at them - and you hope the organization's CEO would do this - it's pretty obvious that orchestras play hardly any music by Black composers. I mean, 99% of what they play is by white men, who are also 90% or more dead and who are mostly European.

And the LAO has or should have a pretty darned good idea of who is playing in its constituent orchestras (98% white or Asian or of Asian descent) and who the executives and staff of the constituent orchestras are. The CEOs are almost entirely white men, with a smattering of women. Off the top of my head, I know of maybe four orchestras currently led by Black conductors (Edmonton, Berkeley, Oakland, Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra). (Oh, wait, William Eddins is now Emeritus at Edmonton, sorry!)

So this gives you an idea of why you get a lot of denial about the existence and impact of racism: if you're one of those who have the lowest possible difficulty setting, it's pretty easy to not notice the situation of other people. And it might take being hit over the head by an obvious police murder or ten (these go on all the time, people) and a lot of protests to finally realize what a big deal this is.

I'll close by saying: listen to Black people. It's not as if there haven't been plenty of conversations and plenty of attempts by Black individuals to tell musical organizations and individuals at those organizations what's going on with racism in classical music.

Updated: Added a couple of sentences about Black conductors.


* I'm sitting here and quietly contemplating the fact that the first three prominent female executives who crossed my mind - Deborah Borda, Christina Scheppelmann, and Francesca Zambello - are all partnered with women.

A Bit More on Solidarity

My friends over at SorryWatch have a fine summary of what makes a good apology:

1. Use the words "I'm sorry."
2. Say what you are sorry for.
3. Acknowledge the effect of what you did.
4. Explain what you did, if need be.
5. Explain why it won't happen again.
6. State what you will do to make up for it.

I want to post a solidarity message, from Fireclay Tile, that gets beyond "we're in this together" far enough to acknowledge the specific problems with racism in their industry and their own complicity in the issues, complete with numbers about their workforce. They then go on to say "here are some specific things we are doing to try to make this better."

I think it's pretty good. I would not capitalize white as they do, though, and while I understand why they mention "a safer and truly equitable world for people of all colors," I would have kept the focus on Black Americans. Still, this is better than a lot of what I am seeing.

Our feelings mean nothing without action. 
There is no part of society that is not affected by anti-blackness and racism. In the design industry alone, only 2% of licensed architects in the U.S. are Black. In 2017, Interior Design degrees were awarded to a mere 6.3% of Black Americans (while 59.6% were awarded to White Americans). These disparities are a reflection of the lack of resources, mobility, and ultimately systemic oppression that affect Black Americans everywhere.

We will be the first to admit that change must start within our own company. While our team of 143 is largely BIPOC, only 2% are Black and 80% of our leadership is White.

We do not accept this. 
There is no going back to a “new normal”. It is up to us to reimagine a safer and truly equitable world for people of all colors. As Design Consultant Tiffanie White put it, “If we’re really Made in America, our organization must reflect the many faces of America, too.”

We’re getting to work. 
This week, we donated to Campaign Zero, a leading organization that aims to end police violence in America, and The Bail Project, which actively prevents incarceration and combats racial and economic disparities in the bail system.

We are also matching employee donations. We’ll continue to allocate funds to organizations that actively pursue justice for Black Americans and share them with our community.

In addition, we created a Diversity & Inclusion Committee and convened to organize a plan of action. Some of our action items included: 

• Implement training at every level of the organization to learn more about and dismantle the systemic racism in America
• Broaden our Fireclay Tile partnerships to include more Black Designers and amplify Black voices
• Evaluate hiring methods and revisit our employee handbook to make diversity an explicit priority
• Seek out diversity consultants to build an organization that is representative of our country and core values
• Research opportunities for tile contributions to help rebuild Black communities across the country 

This is just the beginning. We are actively working to back-up our actions with research and serious self-reflection. We will continue to keep you posted on our progress so that you can keep us accountable—we cannot do this alone.

While our road to equality will be long and imperfect, that’s how we know it is a journey worth pursuing. We hope you will join us. 

"Solidarity," etc.

So I've gotten vast numbers of emails, from musical organizations, museums, commercial enterprises, etc. this week, all making attempts to address racism and show solidarity with the protests that are quite rightly sweeping the United States following the murder of George Floyd.

First off, the protestors are out there taking very significant risks. They are at increased risk of exposure to COVID-19 and they're at great risk of police brutality. There are lots of films of police violence directed at peaceful, nonthreatening protestors; if you have any need to see these, Greg Doucette is keeping a running tally of links to them.

If you watch these videos, keep in mind that a lot of what you see will be video of cops beating up white people. Cops beat up, murder, and abuse Black people every day. It's only part of the ongoing systemic violence that Black Americans are subjected to. Imagine living with that.

If you're white, your skin color protects you from a lot of that violence, and furthermore, you probably were raised to believe that the police were there to protect you. No, really, they are not; you just have been lucky. Anyone who has been sexually assaulted will be happy to tell you how uninterested the cops are in either protecting you or properly investigating such assaults.

Getting back to all the solidarity emails: I have been deleting them as fast as I can. In some cases, they are coming from businesses and organizations that are at least donating to protest-related and Black-community-supporting organizations, and I'm glad to see the donations.

In most cases, all I can say to these organizations is, put your damn money where your mouth is, and I mean through your actions rather than your words. Talk is easy, action is harder. You could start by asking yourselves these questions:

1. When did you last perform a work by a Black person? How many are scheduled for your upcoming season? (Whenever that might be, I know, I know.)
2. When did you last commission a work by a Black person?
3. What's your audience like?
4. Can we see photos of your board and administration?
5. Can we see photos of the last decade of conductors? And your orchestra? Your actors, if a theater company? Your dancers, if a dance company? Your singers? Your instrumental soloists? Your directors? Your choreographers? Your stage and backstage crews?
6. Do you have processes in place for dealing with racist behavior inside your company? Are these codified in union agreements?
7. What are you doing to fix the issues you see when you give honest answers to the above questions?

UPDATES: 1. This post has gotten a couple of hundred views, and I want to note that I think the questions were inspired by a post I saw on Twitter.....and I can't find it, which I would like to do so as to give proper credit. If you see such a post, please do point me at it.)
2. Edited to make it clear anyone can be a victim of sexual assault. I should not have phrased it as I dd initially.

Let me help with this translation.

Last week, some students from the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston visited the Museum of Fine Arts, where they subjected to "racist and disparaging comments and treatment from MFA staff and museum patrons," according to the principal of their school. 

The students in question were 7th graders (12 to 14 year olds), all students of color from the same middle school.  From the Globe article about this incident:

Forrest [the principal] said his staff has conveyed that one museum staff member reportedly told the academy students “no food, no drink, and no watermelon” at one point during the trip. There is a long history in this country of watermelon being used as a racist trope.

Forrest said he had heard other reports of museum security singling out students, following them as they progressed through exhibits while leaving white students alone.

Additionally, one museum patron reportedly made a comment to a female student about paying attention in the MFA so she could avoid a career as a stripper, while another patron referred to a group of students as “(expletive) black kids,” said Forrest.

A teacher on the trip:

Lamy also noticed museum staff closely followed the group of students she was with throughout the visit. Whenever the students would start moving, the staffers would start moving, and whenever they stopped, so did the workers, she said. 

And here are some excerpts from the "apology" that the museum posted on its web site:

 Last week, a number of students on an organized visit encountered a range of challenging and unacceptable experiences that made them feel unwelcome. That is not who we are or want to be. Our intention is to set the highest of standards, and we are committed to doing the work that it will take to get there.

Let me translate: for "encountered a range of challenging and unacceptable experiences that made them feel unwelcome" substitute "were treated in blatantly racist fashion by both staff and patrons at the MFA, an experience that is all too common for people of color in the United States."

For "That is not who we are or want to be," substitute "This happened because we have not properly trained our staff in how they are to behave and we have not trained them in how to recognize and deal with racist behavior in patrons."

You'l notice that the open letter never mentions racism. Amazing. It's a really crappy apology that doesn't name what has happened or mention the specific steps the MFA will take to ensure that this doesn't happen again. The letter doesn't mention the consequences for the staff members who behaved in a racist fashion and who failed to protect these children from the racist comments of other patrons.