James Zimmermann

He crumbled.

The orchestra management hired him unilaterally with no vote of his colleagues.

So he can now never say that he was hired based on our qualifications, our vote.

He was stamped a DEI hire forever.

And when I protested, he made up a Jussie Smollett-like narrative about me that I was a stalker and a racist and a nasty person and a white supremacist.

Well, then they gave him another probationary year so he could prove himself and prove that he was going to get tenure.

That's maybe a piece of the detail that you were missing.

After a player wins a blind audition, they're typically given a one-year probationary contract where the player is evaluated on whether or not they're a good fit.

Because a blind audition doesn't tell you everything about somebody.

It doesn't tell you what their personality is, what kind of a colleague they are, if they show up on time, if they're a good listener, if they take correction easily.

This black oboe player was very bad at all of those things.

So...

What do you do?

We either hire the guy or we kick him to the curb and he sues the orchestra for racial discrimination for trying to fire him illegally.

A suit that in 2019, he absolutely would have won.

We all would have gotten crushed.

So the management of the orchestra says, well, we can just fire this one

player, and pin the whole thing on him.

And that's what they did to me.

And I knew they were going to do it.