🎹sharon su 🎹: The idea of strangers looking at me and knowing some of the most painful, humiliating things that terrible men have done to me, when all I want to do is have my music be heard, makes me want to retch, and I suspect that’s how a lot of women feel

An absolutely eviscerating read. This stuff is SO common and it’s infuriating how institutions only get on board when compelled by public opinion (and often, as Anne points out, only after journalists have busted their butts to uncover the story)

I had a few things to get off my chest about sexual harassment and the field's reaction to articles about it.

An Open Letter to the Classical Music Fieldannemidgette.com Dear Philadelphia Orchestra Musicians and Philadelphia Orchestra, dear Curtis Institute, and dear other classical music organizations and orchestra musicians’ collectives:

The huge upwelling of support I’ve seen for Cara Kizer has been genuinely heartwarming, but I’m also heartbroken that it took her experience being so publicly aired to move the needle

The idea of strangers looking at me and knowing some of the most painful, humiliating things that terrible men have done to me, when all I want to do is have my music be heard, makes me want to retch, and I suspect that’s how a lot of women feel

So I’m in awe of Cara’s sacrifice—which is what this is—in relinquishing any remaining semblance of privacy around this experience, and I really wish that orgs and schools would take situations like this more seriously so victims don’t have to make these impossible choices

And when I say this type of thing is common, it is COMMON. My own educational path was derailed by knowledge of a predator at a major conservatory who, afaik, has still never experienced any discipline or backlash

One hugely famous instrumentalist is so known by basically everyone in music to be a predator that even my opera singer friends know about it. Like, do you realize how bad it must be if a VOCALIST knows about it? (vocalists ilu)

I don’t think, realistically, the culture is going to change very dramatically anytime soon, because classical music is one of the most deeply entrenched bastions of inequity, but if big orgs/institutions/schools really want to make the world better through art, they can start here

Anyway. Reporting like what we saw in the original story is heroic and very necessary, but heroic reporting is a sign that an institution somewhere has failed

It's really telling that I know exactly who you're talking about

It’s so funny how even with no identifying info whatsoever, everyone knows

yep 🙃

I'm barely a professional musician and even I know about that because of music twitter

We've got to keep track of all of ours. Ugh I'm sorry this happens everywhere so much.

This could be… so many people not outed publicly. The only thing I feel like I can do is tell my students not to study with this or that person under no pretenses… and have a honest talk with them about it all when they turn 18.

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