TOP CLUES YOUR AUDITION AIN'T ACTUALLY BLIND
I really hate to beat a dead horse or repeat myself, but maybe if I make it shorter and clearer:
Your Audition Is Not Blind If (any of the following):
Not everyone plays a preliminary round.
You pre-advance candidates to rounds after the preliminary round.
Your committee has access to the internet.
You take the screen down at any time during the audition.
You employ trial weeks.
Candidates play audition repertoire for committee members in advance.
You have a tenure process.
You reveal identities of candidates—even after the audition ends—to the jury.
You invite people to play in your orchestra the same week as the audition.
Your audition is invitation-only.
Your committee is all white men.
So think about all those things the next time you want to cry “but blind auditions!” and “white men are the best at music!” Now, if like me, you think that blind auditions as they exist currently aren’t a great way to test for the best player for a lot of orchestra positions, we can talk about a way forward. But we can’t if we’re all going to pretend auditions are blind right now.
It would be really interesting to take a historical look at blind auditions. They’re often used as a model in discussions about equitable hiring practices bc when they first started, they pretty effectively increased women’s participation in orchestras and did a little bit to mitigate the overt racism of the time. But my guess is that the process has become looser and looser as decades have gone on, which leaves a field believing it has a meritocracy when it really doesn’t.
Once I auditioned for the Oregon Symphony and plainly saw the proctor give my resume that they asked everyone to bring to the panel behind the screen. I thought I must have imagined it but then my friend who auditioned after me asked, "Did you see them give your resume to the panel?"