James Zimmermann

And everybody is tired of the struggle sessions that he's putting us through.

All of his extra social media that he does declaring that orchestras are racist, nobody wants to hear that.

We just want to come to work.

We want to play with the best players and leave.

It's a simple job.

It's a fun job.

And his presence and his advocacy sucked all the fun out of it for everybody.

This is not a job you're going to get rich doing.

It's the most important role in an orchestra.

When you go to an orchestra and it gets quiet when the lights go down and we all tune up to that one note, that's the oboist giving that note.

The oboist gives all the best solos, all the most beautiful solos in the repertoire by Brahms and Beethoven and Debussy are all given to the first oboe.

It's an

amazing instrument and it can have more artistic influence on the sound of the group than any other instrument.

So this was not some job where the guy could be covered for by everybody else around him.

He was setting the tone quite literally for what we were doing.

That's right.

I mean, I believed in him.

I thought he was very talented, which he was.

He has great natural ability.

And let's not take away his achievement of winning a blind audition against a national pool of candidates from all over the place.