Orchestra

It seems DC’s thirst for restrictions did not end last April when the city dropped its mask mandate. Washingtonians still feel an incessant need to be regulated and the National Symphony Orchestra has just found the most recent method — nut bans.   In an email passed to Cockburn by a tipster about a concert starting this week at the NSO, orchestra management has established a “nut-free zone” in the building. Per their order, all performances September 5-8 will be strictly nut-free — and that’s not all. Trace amounts of nut oil will also be prohibited.  “No foods with peanuts or hazelnuts or foods cooked in nut oil can be brought onstage or backstage,” the email reads.

The fight for equality in America has been long and hard-fought. Sometimes a multi-generational upheaval has been required to undo old notions and myths. But there have been a few times when a new process enabled these changes to happen almost overnight. In the world of classical music, no change was more consequential than the instituting of blind auditions, whereby the musician auditioning for a position is behind a screen, and the only thing a panel can adjudicate is the sound of music.How do we know this was so successful? Because even self-proclaimed bigots found themselves choosing differently, in spite of themselves. In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes how in 1980, Abbie Conant won a position as principal trombone with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.