James Zimmermann

That is exactly accurate, Megan.

What happened was there was a botched blind audition for a Black oboist who had been playing on a temporary basis in the orchestra.

Sometimes when an orchestra needs to fill a gap and doesn't have time to host a national blind audition, they will just appoint someone on a temporary basis.

So this oboist was hired.

without an audition based on his qualifications.

He was a pretty good player, but not necessarily up to the standards of everyone else.

But I took him under my wing, became his friend.

I coached him for free leading up to the national blind audition that he had to win to become our permanent principal oboist.

and i said to him what none of his friends had ever dared to say which is look man it's not so much this racism you're talking about all around you it's the fact that you're paranoid and you are not taking accountability for your shortcomings but i believe in you and i believe you can win this thing and i'm i'm gunning for you i got your back and the best possible outcome here is that you win and we have the first principal oboist of color in the united states in a major orchestra

And that's what was about to happen in his blind audition.

He was the last man standing after days of difficult competition.

But accidentally, we found out it was him during deliberations.

And our conductor and the rest of my colleagues who are on this blind audition panel said, oh, I don't want to play with this guy.

What do we do?

And the conductor says, all right, we're going to declare this a no win situation.

We're going to send him home and we're never going to speak of this again.

And I said, over my dead career, can you do that?

So I took a stand against the conductor and all of my colleagues and said, we are going to march back into the conductor's office and tell him how despicable that decision was.

And we're going to give this black oboist a chance to prove himself.

And we did that.