"Screens have served the anonymity purpose," says BSO music director Marin Alsop. "It was a mostly gender-related move, initially, and it's been a success - most orchestras are 50-50 [men and women] now."
But to help improve racial diversity, she says, "the audition process needs to evolve. It needs to include some type of interview process as well to find out if the candidate is a good fit, if [he or she] can do more than just play."
Everything depends, of course, on how many African-American musicians audition.
"The pool of players is not there," says Alsop. "The obvious deduction is that we're not interesting young African-American kids in getting involved in classical music." To help change that, the BSO launched an educational initiative called OrchKids that started bringing intensive music education to first-graders at a Baltimore school this year. Patterned after a hugely successful nationwide program in Venezuela, OrchKids aims to grow a new crop of classical musicians or fans in the years to come.
Murray, the violinist in the Ritz ensemble, says that she and her colleagues "were all lucky to have families who supported us. But I had extended family members who were, like, 'What are you doing? That's white music.' But any African-American person that I've seen at a concert appreciates it just like anyone else."
Recent Peabody Conservatory graduate Jarvis Benson, a violist who was a member of the Black Student Union at the school, strikes a similar note. "I don't think the problem is that African-Americans don't like classical music, but that they haven't been exposed to it. It's like golf - after Tiger Woods came along, more blacks got interested in it."
'I love teaching'
Troy Stuart's interest in music was cultivated at the Baltimore School for the Arts and the Peabody Conservatory. He now teaches at both places. Although he served as a substitute player in the BSO a few times early in his career, and occasionally thinks about getting into an orchestra permanently, he has so far been hooked on chamber music. And teaching.
In addition to working at the two Baltimore schools each week, he travels to New York City on alternate days to teach at the Third Street Music School Settlement in Greenwich Village and the Opus 118 Harlem School of Music that inspired the 1999 Meryl Streep film Music from the Heart.
"I love teaching," Stuart says. "I love this music. I respect it. And it's my life's goal to share it."
