Inclusion is part of orchestra’s DNA
Chicago Sinfonietta at forefront of diversity, equity and inclusion for last 30-plus years
Major American orchestras — which are among the country’s most tradition-bound and least diverse cultural institutions — are wrestling with how to catch up to the current moment.
How to make revered, age-old ensembles better reflect the demographics of the cities in which they’re based. How to build audiences and staffs and boards that embrace and celebrate the diversity of American life.
But at least one orchestra has been championing these goals for more than three decades: the Chicago Sinfonietta.
Founded in 1987 by the late conductor and activist Paul Freeman, the Sinfonietta was designed from day one to welcome people of color, onstage and off. So as America’s orchestras in recent years have been struggling to do the same, they could learn a great deal from the ongoing experiment that is the Sinfonietta.
More than 35 percent of the Sinfonietta is staffed by musicians of color, and over 45 percent of those are women, according to the organization. Similarly, the Sinfonietta audience on average is 46 percent people of color – specifically 37 percent African American, 5 percent Latino and 4 percent Asian. As for who runs the orchestra: 58 percent of the board, 73 percent of the associate board and 36 percent of the staff are people of color.
And on May 15, Blake-Anthony Johnson became the Sinfonietta’s new chief executive officer, making him the only African American to lead what the Sinfonietta calls a “national orchestra” (in that it tours nationally and commands a coast-to-coast reputation).
Diversity “is so much in the DNA of the organization,” says Johnson, 30, a cellist who has performed with orchestras and as soloist around the world. “I think people really look to the Chicago Sinfonietta to be the leader, not just here in Chicago, but nationally.”
For good reason, since no major American orchestra has been championing its mantra of “diversity, equity and inclusion” as long as the Sinfonietta.
Conductor Freeman began conceiving the venture in the mid-1980s, when he told me of his plans to shatter the barriers that were keeping Black musicians and other artists of color on the periphery of classical music.
“Chicago does not yet have an ensemble comparable to what the Chicago Sinfonietta is going to be,” Freeman told me in 1987. “I’m not trying to rap any other groups, but Chicago does not yet have a midsize symphony with as big a season and as broad plans as we have for the Chicago Sinfonietta.”
The Sinfonietta gave its first concert in October 1987, in Orchestra Hall, and the results were mixed, leading me to write in that first review: “At its best, the Sinfonietta played at the level one might expect of a decent pickup orchestra.”
But that’s exactly what the Sinfonietta was at that point — a brand new gathering of musicians starting to learn to work together. Yet Freeman made history even with that Sinfonietta bow, choosing as his first guest soloist the African American soprano Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, star of the Jean-Jacques Beineix film thriller “Diva” (1981). Black musicians, Freeman seemed to be saying, would be at the forefront of this orchestra, not the sidelines.
By the second season, the Sinfonietta was off and running, turning in an illuminating performance of “Antifonys,” by George Walker, who would become the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize in Music (1996).
The innovations kept coming, the Sinfonietta
creating Project Inclusion Freeman Fellowships to nurture diverse talents in orchestral, chamber, conducting and administrative fields; Project W, to spotlight women musicians and help close the gender gap in classical music; and an artist-inresidence program, which commissioned composer Kathryn Bostic to write a work that will be featured in the Sinfonietta’s season-opening virtual concert on Oct. 17.
All of which was designed “to address the imbalance in the power dynamic that we have in our arts institutions and in our country,” says Jim Hirsch, Sinfonietta CEO from 2004 to 2020.
“If you look at who the gatekeepers are, and who the decision-makers are, it’s very much ensconced in the white power structure,” he says. “There are very, very few African American music directors (of orchestras). There are very few orchestra managers who are African American, very few board chairs who are people of color.
“At the end of the day, this has got to be more than white people exhibiting noblesse oblige. It really does need to be included in a paradigm shift as well. And that’s hard, it’s scary. But it’s necessary.”
Or, as current Sinfonietta CEO Johnson puts it, an organization can’t be “more equitable and more inclusive … if there’s just one segment of the population that’s always making the decisions.”
So why is the Sinfonietta such an outlier? Why is it so difficult for major orchestras to evolve more quickly? Why are large orchestras so lacking in Black musicians and so scant in their offerings of diverse repertoire?
“It’s a complicated answer,” says MeiAnn Chen, who took over from Freeman as music director in 2011 and whose contract was extended in May through the 2023-24 season. (Freeman died in 2015 at age 79.)
“I think the main part comes from the orchestra itself,” says Chen. “As an art form, (it) is very much tied to the traditions we have. If you look at the major repertoire we have, it’s mostly museum pieces.”
Most of those were composed by European white males, giving orchestras a narrow demographic perspective from the first notes they play.
In addition, “Every orchestra’s collective bargaining agreement details how new members are auditioned and accepted,” says Chen. “And even though that can vary from orchestra to orchestra, in the main scheme of things, the blind audition is still very much part of how new members are being auditioned.”
One might think that the blind audition, which is designed to prevent discrimination by having musicians audition behind a screen, would encourage fairness. And it has – to a certain degree.
“The major orchestras do blind auditions through all but the final round; often the screens come down at the final round,” says former Sinfonietta CEO Hirsch.
“When you talk to really talented musicians of color who have gotten close but haven’t made it all the way, they often will talk about the final round being the barrier they couldn’t break. Blind auditions are great in some ways. They made a huge difference in the number of women who made it into orchestras. But it hasn’t solved color.”
When Bobby Everson, the Sinfonietta’s principal timpanist since the first concert, shows up at various orchestral auditions, he realizes that African Americans like him are extremely under-represented.
“There are very, very few other people of color at auditions, when I can see who’s there,” says Everson. “If I go to an audition, and there are 50 people there, maybe 2 are Black. So the odds aren’t there to begin with.”
The reasons for that are open to debate, but surely the opportunities denied disadvantaged students early in life have something to do with it.
“I think it’s because most people of color aren’t introduced to symphonic music at an early enough age to have a liking for it,” says timpanist Everson. “I think that if more generally underserved people were exposed to classical music, they might want to pursue it.
“My elementary school would take us to see the CSO in their youth series. I was in an elementary school band. That’s another thing that’s even more important. There’s not bands (in schools) like there used to be. That’s where the interest starts — in fourth or fifth grade.
“In our high school, our band would play orchestral transcriptions. They would be the most fun. That’s where I got the bug (for) playing symphonic works.”
The Sinfonietta has achieved more diverse staffing than many other orchestras in the most direct way possible: recruitment. Timpanist Everson, for instance, had played concerts that Freeman guest conducted before founding the Sinfonietta, thereby catching the maestro’s attention.
“Paul Freeman actually sought me out” for the first Sinfonietta concert, recalls Everson. “He remembered me.”
So though the Sinfonietta also had blind auditions, explains former CEO Hirsch, “we were probably better at recruiting candidates than most other orchestras in the country. So our auditions had a lot of candidates who were from diverse backgrounds. Right off the bat, we were ahead of the game.”
Unfortunately, positions in major orchestras become available quite infrequently.
“The blind audition is not the system to blame, but the fact that there are so few openings,” says Sinfonietta music director Chen. “That really creates a bottleneck for the people who are entering the field.”
But even getting to an audition can be daunting, because it’s expensive: Musicians have to pay their own travel and accommodations, and “may have to try 10 to 20 auditions to land one” position, says Chen.
“That’s why maestro Freeman created Project Inclusion,” a mentorship program that gives emerging musicians a chance to hone their skills in the Sinfonietta, to better prepare themselves for the auditions ahead, says Chen. (The Sphinx Organization in Detroit also has been active in helping diverse musicians audition for orchestral positions.)
Chen has gone still further: After Jonathan Rush completed a 2018 Project Inclusion Conducting Fellowship, for instance, Chen appointed him Sinfonietta assistant conductor in 2019, to give him more time on the podium. The effort has paid off handsomely: Rush recently was named assistant conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Even with all these groundbreaking ventures, the Sinfonietta’s journey has not been easy. When Hirsch became CEO in 2004, “We were half a million in the red, needed to replace two (of four) senior staff members, and the board’s morale was pretty much nonexistent,” he told me earlier this year.
He quickly zeroed in on board recruitment, fundraising and perhaps most important, making clear to everyone what the Sinfonietta was all about.
“To me it was obvious even before I joined: It was the organization’s unique and important commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in classical music,” Hirsch told me.
By signaling and marketing that message wherever he could, Hirsch was able to leverage financial support that previously had eluded the institution. In 2016, the Sinfonietta won a MacArthur Award for Creative & Effective Institutions, which came with a check for $625,000 – a whopping sum for an organization with an annual budget of about $2.2 million (the Sinfonietta’s most recent budget, prepandemic, was about $2.3 million).
And the Sinfonietta’s mission has continued to be a source of its financial strength.
“People who give us sponsorships, it may not only be because they love Beethoven or Tchaikovsky – they give it to us because they believe in what we stand for,” says music director Chen.
“When one organization has such a unique mission, it is possible to go beyond the traditional groups of sponsors. For me, that is the most amazing thing. We were able to secure media sponsorships, airline sponsorships and more.”
Which ought to be a clue for other, bigger orchestras: Make diversity a core goal, and support will follow.
Pursuing diversity, says former CEO Hirsch, “never felt difficult — it felt joyful. Bringing music by composers who are not heard and introducing them to an audience is a really exciting process.”
Current CEO Johnson sees the Sinfonietta’s long-standing approach as the future for orchestral music in America.
“Right now, every orchestra is really in a race to become that 21st century orchestra, and it’s not a model that has been perfected,” says Johnson. “A lot of people now are invested in diversity, equity and inclusion.”
The question is whether other, bigger orchestras can build on what the Sinfonietta has achieved.