Klarinet Archive - Posting 000125.txt from 1999/02

From: Dodgshun family <dodgshun@-----.nz>
Subj: Re: [kl] Women and orchestras
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 20:42:48 -0500

At 07:53 PM 1/02/99 EST, you wrote:

<snip>
>Grade school: "Girls don't play the drums. Girls don't play the
>trumpet." Junior high: "Girls don't play baritone sax. No, they don't play
>bass clarinet, either. Here's a nice alto clarinet." I got so sick of being
>a gooood little girl. I wanted to cut loose and MAKE SOME NOISE!

I never got told girls don't play baritone sax (probably because I was at an
all-girls school!), but I can certainly sympathise with wanting to make some
noise! I loved my baritone, and was told on more than one occasion that I
"played more gruntily than any male school-aged player in town" which was
great! We still don't have many female brass (I'm throwing horns in with
woodwind here - they're a different kettle of fish) players here - we had a
very good female principal trumpet in the youth orchestra a couple of years
ago, and we've got a female trombone player (even rarer, I think), but there
are no female brass players in the local professional orchestra. As for
percussion, well, our principal percussionist is a 17 year old female who
rules her department, as our conductor put it, "with a rod of iron".
Frankly, she's brilliant.

<snip>
>The concept of this all-female orchestra is
>every bit as sexist as the Vienna Philharmonic's traditionally all-male
>concept. IMHO, the way to combat sexism or any other "ism" is by rejecting
>it, not by perpetrating more of it.

If a group of men decided to set up an all-male orchestra in this day and
age, there would be instant reaction in the form of females claiming sexism
and breach of the Human Rights Act (as it stands in NZ). So why can females
get away with it? Gender should have nothing to do with candidate
selection. The system we use for auditions here works well in that respect
- we do them blind. Each candidate plays from behind a screen and is
identified by number alone; this way you don't get any prejudice creeping in.

Anna

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