Clearly I’m out of touch with the world of fine arts, as it never would have occurred to me that at least one Symphony Orchestra is a preserve of sexist idiocy. Somehow the musicians’ "artistic expertise was being disregarded" in the "premature conclusion of the search process."
The coverage has that quality of vague that always indicates to me that nobody’s on the level. The musicians cite unspecified "concerns" (which I have to interpret as "you can’t make us follow some girl," since surely any substantive shortcoming would be bruited far and wide), while on the other hand we have Baltimore Symphony President Glicker: "Glicker expressed confidence that she would achieve a smooth relationship with the orchestra through ‘her personality on the podium. That’s pretty compelling,’ he said. ‘And she has great people skills. I’m hoping that’s going to win the day.’"
Her personality on the podium? People skills? I suppose conducting a bunch of egotistical gifted children does require good people skills, but why not say "her technical prowess is world class, and we’re lucky to have her," if it’s true? And if it’s not true, why would you hire her? Merely because "She has the ability to sit down one on one with a patron or potential donor and make that person very comfortable"? You need that ability in your Orchestra staff somewhere, but does it really have to be at the conductor position? Or is there a glut of world-class conductors (or it’s just not that hard), so they have the luxury of choosing based on schmoozing ability?
Maybe the next Grisham-esque thriller genre will deal with the cut-throat world of symphony conducting, so all this can be presented to us in an easy-to-grasp form. Hell, for all I know, such works already exist.