Race Notes

...If you have other goals, unfortunately things go awry...

...And has St...

...Does that mean you no longer have to hire black singers or instrumentalists...

...Watts is one of the most famous musicians in the world, so he is on the "Celebrity" series...

...It's a matter of, I'm black, I'm proud of being black, and there's nothing I could do about it even if I weren't proud...

...I don't think you have to put us on a billboard and say, 'These are the black people who are appearing, so I hope all you black people out there will come on out.' I find it offensive to say, 'These are the black ones, so this is "Classically Black...

...The new spirit was nicely expressed in 1993 by James Wolfensohn, then the chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and now the president of the World Bank: "You've got to make orchestras more relevant to the broad level of the community...

...Marietta Simpson reacts with astonishment when told that she is part of the two "Classically Black" series...

...A wholly white middle-class orchestra doesn't appeal to a large segment of the country...

...But it would not be an unreasonable assumption, nor would it be hateful...

...I was totally unaware of it...

...Terrence Wilson, for his part, is not so disapproving of the series, finding it to be, on balance, a "valid effort to reach out...

...There was probably some of both," Yardumian responds...

...But he is also the son of a Hungarian woman and a black American GI, so he beefs up "Classically Black," too...

...I guess you could classify it that way...

...Music Race Notes By Jay Nordlinger The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has announced its 1996-1997 season, and in most respects it is an unremarkable one, offering the usual subscription series dedicated to "Pops," "Celebrity," "Favorites," and so on...

...It all goes back to the misconception of classical music as being something European and the question of, 'Whose music is it?' It's not anybody's music...

...How did it get there...

...That music cannot be "relevant" to black hearers unless the music-makers share their pigmentation...

...When an orchestra keeps asking for Martin Luther King tribute concerts over and over, with no invitations for regular subscription series, then it becomes obvious...

...Amazing...

...But how do you know...

...The pianist Andr...

...They, like other orchestra officials, seem torn about whether race should play a role in musical life...

...The buzzwords that trip most frequently from their lips are "relevance," "outreach," and, that pet, "diversity...

...to have a 'Classically Black' series...

...Demography is of prime concern: "If we had a large Asian or Russian population, we would want to do things to attract that audience, too...

...I'm careful as to how many of these events I'm hired to participate in, because it labels me in a way that I don't want to be labeled as a musician...

...It may be naive to maintain that music should be immune to the race-fever that afflicts contemporary America...

...And because that singer is black-she is the mezzo-soprano Marietta Simpson-the evening is designated "Classically Black...

...Terrence Wilson will make a St...

...If we had not hired a black musician, it would have meant immediate bankruptcy...

...Louis appearance, too, this time with the Grieg concerto...

...Wilson's first appearance with the Baltimore Symphony was, indeed, for a Martin Luther King concert...

...it was the music that gave such a concert its distinctiveness...

...In one breath, Yardumian lauds the meritocratic imperative: "Music is the most important thing...

...I am very happy about who I am, but to design a concert series after my race is offensive to me, because what happens when it's no longer PC...

...They are concerts that have been plucked from the rest and set aside...

...The venue, appropriately, was Detroit, than which no city is more race-obsessed and race-driven...

...The fact remains that the Detroit Symphony was bullied, and the Atlanta Symphony has been, too: In 1991, it lost $70,000 from the city's Bureau of Cultural Affairs because it was judged "weak" in the "cultural diversity" of its programming, personnel, and audiences...

...With the kind of money we expect, we have to be an educational institution...

...The symphony's last movement includes a large chorus and a vocal quartet, and in that quartet the mezzo-soprano (again, Marietta Simpson) and the tenor (Curtis Rayam) are black...

...Louis Symphony Orchestra has its own "Classically Black" series, borrowed from the Baltimoreans, who pioneered it in 1990...

...They're paid union wages, the same compensation as the permanent members, and the weeks they're not playing, they have coaching, including mock auditions...

...it is a consideration...

...Yet "for me, it's not a matter of being known as anything...

...It's not enough to play Mozart and Brahms," Volpe says...

...The zero-sum aspect of such practices is unlamented...

...Amazing," she finally says...

...He accepted on the condition that the orchestra provide him with three other dates in the bargain...

...They have been-in a word-ghettoized...

...The pianist looks forward to a time when skin color no longer touches the musical realm...

...One might be wrong, of course...

...Its universal message does not expire: "Let thy magic bring together/All whom earth-born laws divide;/All mankind shall be as brothers/'neath thy tender wings and wide...

...From that moment, the Detroit Symphony moved vigorously on the racial front...

...But a singer has been booked to perform a couple of arias from Carmen between choruses...

...Volpe avows that there is no discomfort among symphony officials that these ministrations aid only a certain group of musicians, based on race, and no one else...

...Relevancy to your life," she says, "is a good way to enter the concert-going experience...

...Yardumian answers, "It makes it perhaps more interesting, more of an inducement...

...I mean, I can't imagine that anybody would have to divide the concerts like that...

...Watts will come to town, for a Rachmaninoff concerto...

...When my agent called, I was thinking that this was a series devoted to the music of African-American composers or something...

...I think that's in pretty poor taste...

...She takes strong exception to the notion that the look of a musician on stage makes the music either "relevant" or not: "Who stands in front of the orchestra has nothing to do with it...

...Leading this series next season is a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony...

...But if affirmative action is allowed to gain further ground in music, the following disaster might result: If one noticed a black soloist (for example) on a program-especially if that soloist were young and unknown-one might assume that the soloist had been hired for race, and not ability...

...Nonetheless, "there is a failure to recognize that a performer is just a performer...

...Watts.' This came from both African Americans and Caucasians...

...But I am, cautious," he says...

...We've been told numerous times by the black community, 'Why should I go to a concert when the people on stage have nothing to do with me, when they don't have my life experience?'" Is the premise, then, that black people would rather hear music performed by black musicians than by others...

...Typically, members of the quartet are afterthoughts, certainly compared with the conductor...

...If "Classically Black" is "just the first step to try to reach a vaster audience," Wilson is willing to tolerate it as a temporary measure...

...For example, the orchestra will perform an all-Tchaikovsky program...

...Asked to confirm that race is a factor in the engagement of musicians in Baltimore, she pauses: "It is not a factor," she says...

...But he accepted anyway...

...An orchestra is now likely to have an "outreach committee," part of whose function seems to be to exert pressure on music administrators to make race-conscious, rather than strictly musical, choices...

...But there is also a revolutionary series called "Classically Black...

...As a black trombonist in the Atlanta Symphony put it at the time of the Detroit controversy, "It doesn't do any good for players' self-esteem if they feel the rules were bent for them...

...Louis's "Classically Black" series-uses a famous ode by Schiller, regarded as a kind of anthem for music...

...Louis Symphony, reports that some St...

...This notion is treated as quaint, a luxury from a former day, no longer applicable in an age of racial hardball and scrambling for arts funding...

...I want to be 'Terrence Wilson, the pianist.'" "See," he explains, "the elements that can help are the same elements that can be detrimental...

...With appropriations and things like that...

...One blinks to remember that a symphony's "outreach" once consisted of tacking a poster to a wall, or placing a notice in the newspaper, informing people that a concert was in the offing and inviting them to attend...

...They never said, 'You're going to be the next Richard Goode or Radu Lupu or Vladimir Horowitz or Artur Rubinstein or Martha Argerich- those were my musical heroes...

...Or consider a gala concert titled "Great Opera Choruses," a "special event" and therefore not ordinarily part of any subscription series...

...It's something we're conscious of, in the backs of our minds...

...Yeah," says Lee Anna Good, "probably...

...If you label us now because it's convenient, it might be convenient to remove the label-and the musicians with it- later on...

...The orchestra also pays for the fellows to travel to other cities to audition for other orchestras...

...It's going to be a way of distinguishing me...

...But should an orchestra have a social mission...

...To make it appear that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony . . ." She continues, "I don't understand why it has to be categorized like that...

...Indeed, the reverse used to be true: If a black soloist appeared on a program, one could assume that the soloist was especially meritorious, given the racial barriers that had to be overcome...

...We don't want to watch white players and white audiences-it's a matter of morality and economics...

...This is a group of concerts with nothing in common except that the soloists or guest conductors happen to be black...

...Said the bassist, in a telling instance of post-affirmative-action tristesse, "I would rather have auditioned like everybody else...

...The issue of race intruded on the music world in a big way in 1989...

...The series brochure makes no mention of the soprano or bass, or of the conductor, who is the key performer in the work...

...For several moments, she is silent...

...It need hardly be stated where that concert may be found...

...The St...

...The orchestra was paying lip-service to the need for more diversity, in terms of people on stage, and really hadn't created the programs to do anything other than talk the game...

...The executive director at the time braved it out in a press release: "We took this unique initiative to demonstrate our strong commitment to our affirmative action goals...

...The orchestra's management convened an emergency meeting and quickly capitulated...

...The choral movement of that Beethoven symphony-the one on St...

...We want to be sensitive to the community," he says...

...But in the next, she cannot keep from insisting, in acknowledgment of a remedial purpose, "It's going to take generations to undo all of the wrongs that have been done...

...it's just music...

...They also threatened a boycott...

...I don't want to get pigeonholed...

...This is a startling departure for an art that is chiefly aural and spiritual-an art so divorced from the considerations of body that orchestras have long placed applicants for permanent positions behind screens, in "blind auditions...

...The orchestra also established what it calls "African-American fellowships...

...If there were a Russian vocalist or pianist, would that concert qualify in an all-Russian series...

...A positive irony is that [one of the threatening legislators] has become one of our greatest supporters...

...But I don't get where that becomes my calling card...

...That's totally unbelievable...

...On a personal level, I find [this division] really offensive...

...We have to be proactive in terms of educational programming and, again, serve a mission that's broader than just playing Brahms...

...Racism has been so rampant, the idea has been to correct what has been wrong...

...That racial separatism should come to music is tragic...

...So too with an evening of opera excerpts...

...The screen is still up, but auditions may not be held unless there are black musicians in the pool...

...Louis made special efforts to feature black musicians...

...Wilson is well aware that his color is a desirable commodity in a society smitten by race: "I've realized all along that, given these conditions, in some cases race would be an important factor in getting hired...

...Watts is-in the crude lingo of a crude game-a "two-fer...

...She subsequently told the press, "The Detroit Symphony was in a weakened financial situation...

...I think that in the process you can go to the other extreme, but I think it needs to be dealt with...

...Louisians had qualms about "Classically Black" but were reassured by the lack of backlash in Baltimore...

...How so...

...Miryam Yardumian, the music administrator in Baltimore, chooses her words carefully: "We are always looking for African-American artists at the highest level and we are always trying to attract African Americans to our concert audience...

...Because the music is familiar and well-loved-the polonaise from Eugene Onegin, the first piano concerto, etc.-the concert is part of the "Favorites" series...

...This is possibly without precedent...

...Good says much the same: "It probably shouldn't matter, but if it's a way to get them in in the beginning, then it can make the music more relevant to them...

...You don't always know," he allows...

...Prickly and unavoidable is the question of hiring: Did the Baltimore Symphony set out to hire black soloists and guest conductors for "Classically Black," or did it book the season in an undiscriminating fashion and then simply deposit concerts involving black musicians into the series...

...Lee Anna Good, director of public relations for the St...

...The orchestras' intentions are several: corrective, expiatory, commercial, and psychological...

...Two state legislators threatened to block $2.5 million in funds for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra unless it breached its policy of blind auditions and hired a black musician...

...My way of dealing with that is to be cautious and recognize when that is the case...

...I would like to think that all of us in this series are known as good musicians first and that this is why we were engaged...

...It's going to take generations...

...And later: "Love toward countless millions swelling,/Wafts one kiss to all the world...

...But the only thing you can do is . . . When presenters approach my manager with me in mind for some special event that has African-American this or that or the other on it, he will require that it be followed up by something that has nothing to do with it...

...Is it not sufficient to offer great music performed by the finest musicians available...

...The administrators seem not to mind-either because race-consciousness comes naturally to them or because they perceive a financial advantage in it...

...About racial hiring in general, Simpson says, "It's a double-edged kind of thing...

...Thus do today's orchestra officials sound much like their counterparts in the universities...

...If I'm doing the Brahms Alto Rhapsody, I'm not sure how that gets on something called 'Classically Black.'" She agrees that the successes of black musicians ought to be publicized, "but there are more subtle ways to do it...

...Here, though, it is color that counts...

...I don't want to be 'Terrence Wilson, the African-American pianist...

...He recalls, "People would say to me when I was growing up, 'You're going to be the next Andr...

...She would, she says, prefer to be known as a singer, plain and simple...

...If it seems simple, it is: You go by color...

...It was from such a committee that the idea of "Classically Black" came in Baltimore...

...But because the soloist in the concerto, Terrence Wilson, is black, the concert is part of "Classically Black" as well...

...Says executive director Mark Volpe, "The rationale is to identify young African-American musicians right out of school [and] hire them to play a number of weeks...

...The formula is uncomplicated: If a concert features a black musician-no matter what the salient characteristics of that concert-it is eligible for "Classically Black...

...Most would contend that they are also benign...

...Within days, it hired a black bassist without benefit of competition, blind or otherwise...

...Moreover, "some of the earlier criticism was legitimate...

...I can understand the need to bring in a varied audience, but there are other ways to do it...

...The only black and white of it ought to be the notes on the page, or the keys of a piano...

...If Russian singers were in the quartet for the Ninth, would Beethoven then be stuck in a Classically Russian series...

...But today, race has wormed its way into the concert hall, as it has so many other domains, and a musician's color is widely regarded as a significant fact, capable of rendering a piece of music either "relevant" or "irrelevant...

...On the contrary: Volpe is forthright and confident in defense of race-conscious policy...

...In days gone by, a program of Tchaikovsky war-horses would have been just that...

...It began by changing its audition policy...