The Blind Orchestra Audition, and why there still has to be one
“Despite admirable achievements from outstanding musical women in Chicago, the fact remains that women often aren’t making it onto ‘power lists’—whether informal or in print. The men in our community have been far more successful in amassing social capital and using it to advance their musical careers. Why is this the case? Why aren’t more women being recognized for visionary artistic leadership in Chicago’s contemporary music scene—and why aren’t more women providing that visionary leadership in the first place?”
—Ellen McSweeney at NewMusicBox, April 10, 2013, in response to Chicago magazine’s February “new music power list,” which included seven men and one woman
Related and Sources:
Harpist in the Lions’ Den
Blind auditions key to hiring musicians
Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians
BLT 
The Pulitzer Prizes were announced this morning. You may be interested in the winner of the Music Prize: http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2013-Music
Thanks! This is lovely:
http://www.pulitzer.org/WORKS/2013-Music
And the 2013 winner of the Pulitzer Music Prize, one Caroline Shaw, is the 5th woman to win in the past 70 years. We can easily name them all here:
2013 – Caroline Shaw
2010 – Jennifer Higdon
1999 – Melinda Wagner
1991 – Shulamit Ran
1983 – Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.
Interesting, each was awarded the Prize in years since the institution of the blind audition in most (if not all) of the big orchestras. I know the Prize is for more than “orchestra” related works, but could this be mere co-incidence?
The remaining 62 Pulitzer Music Prize (three years of “no award”) are, of course, all men, too many to list here in this comment very easily.
Interesting — in the interest of full disclosure, I was not pushing for Shaw to receive the award. I think it should have gone to Wadada Leo Smith’s four and a half hour long jazz composition: “Ten Freedom Summers“:
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=42324
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownload.php?id=7689