Diversity tops the agenda at this year's ABO conference

The opening session of the ABO conference - this year online due to the pandemic - cut straight to the heart of the issue that has been troubling the orchestral sector for years. Diversity, or lack thereof, is a matter that has been thrown into sharp relief in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests that shook the world last year. Now impossible to ignore or sideline, improving representation and access to classical music of people from all ethnicities is being treated with urgency and determination. 

To open the conference, Roger Wilson, co-founder of Black Lives in Music, was joined by Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE, founder and artistic & executive director of Chineke! Orchestra, Victoria Sayles, violinist, London Mozart Players, and Linton Stephens, bassoonist and chair of the Musicians Union EDI Committee.

The panel outlined the ways in which orchestras can embed meaningful and lasting change - thereby countering tokenistic, grandiose gestures. (At one point, Wilson said, memorably: 'Stirring social media statements are not enough.')

Stephens pointed out the need for protected characteristics - not just ethnicity, but disability and gender too - to be a core part of how an orchestra operates. 'Orchestras need to start looking beyond the player base, management team and boards,' he said. 'We need to start looking at the structures that have allowed classical music to continue on the trajectories it has done for 400 years, which comes down to attitudes.'

Stephens went on to list some of the many things orchestras can do to change the attitudes that perpetuate inequalities and stifle change. 'Embedding diversity training is vital, as is listening to and seeking advice from people who have been on the receiving end of discrimination,' he said. 'Role models are vital; decolonising the repertoire. Above all, pride needs to be removed from conversations. My white colleagues come to these conversations with so much pride. Is it really still so important that we play Beethoven and Mozart?'

Chineke!'s Chi-chi Nwanoku went on to point how screened auditions illuminate the pervasiveness of unconscious bias in the auditioning process. 'When I speak to colleagues in America who have gone through auditions behind a screen, it’s hard to think that there’s not something in it,' she said. 'Why is it that as soon as the screen’s gone, we don’t get the job?'

Classical Music's full report of the ABO conference will be published next week.