James Zimmermann

This is a major position.

Principal clarinet of the Nashville Symphony.

This is Music City.

And a position like that can lead to jobs in academia, in recording studios.

This is no small potatoes.

This is not a hobby.

This is not something that people do outside of their regular job for fun.

This is a career.

The stakes were high, and I thought, this guy had enough talent, but he was just broken-brained.

You know how some of these wokesters get.

They can't think.

They don't see reality for what it is.

They start seeing racism in everything, every interaction, and it...

So I was thinking maybe we can disabuse him of these horrible notions of what's going on around him and convince him to just tone it down and do your playing.

But he was not able to be convinced that the world was anything other than what he said it was.

So I thought, well, we've got to kick this guy to the curb.

Nobody wants to work with this.

Forget it.

Oh, yeah.

In our meetings that were leading up to the decision about whether he should get tenure or not, he had no support whatsoever from any musician.