To Have Worked With a Predator
Content warning: assault, abuse of minors, language.
This past weekend marked the fifth time I’ve found out after a collaboration that a conductor I worked with has either been convicted of a sexual offense, been the subject of a public allegation of sexual misconduct, or been found responsible through institutional or legal process. Each time, I didn’t know when we collaborated that this track record existed. In some cases, I’ve heard after a collaboration about a conductor’s repeated behavior that isn’t illegal, but is compulsive and predatory. In other cases, it’s child abuse.
To be clear: I am not talking about relationships that develop organically and consensually between adults and their conductors. That’s fine by me! Some of you even get married! I support your love.
I am talking about those conductors who repeatedly use a power imbalance in their favor, making unwanted, unprompted, and uninvited sexual overtures or grooming their singers for abuse. One of these conductors is serving jail time.
In so many of these cases, the conductor also has a record of unprofessional behavior, ranging from the relatively benign to the unforgivable. Sometimes it’s technically legal, but still the kind of behavior you’d never want your own singers or students to experience. Time after time, these conductors are hired—even by people who know their history—to work with singers and repeat their pattern of abuse.
I always feel stupid for not seeing the signs earlier. But how can we know what no one will tell us? Every time, the details have only come out after the fact, when a close colleague has seen that conductor’s name on my score or in my bio.
I worry that the repercussions for speaking openly about a conductor’s unethical behavior will brand me as a gossip or someone “difficult to work with." I have shut my mouth, except with trusted colleagues. I have removed two premieres from my catalogue. No matter how proud I have felt of writing that music, it feels indelibly tainted now. Here’s a piece that’s no longer available for performance. You don’t know about the other; you’ve never seen it, and you never will.
I look forward to the next decade of my life, in which, other women have told me, I'll have fewer and fewer fucks to give. But I have been a coward. I don’t yet have the confidence to shout these names from rooftops without fear of retaliation or legal consequences.
It doesn’t take shouting to stop hiring abusers, though. There’s a reason whisper networks exist. Conductors, I ask you: What will it take to stop hiring people who have already demonstrated through their past actions that, given any opportunity, they would prey upon your singers, too? Why would you want to work with these people in any capacity? No amount of “genius” justifies hiring someone who will ask your singers in person or over text (again: unwanted, unprompted, and uninvited) for sex.
I beg you, share verifiable information whenever possible, even if it’s only with people you trust. Before you hire someone, speak widely with people who have worked with them, beyond the references they provide. Whenever you can, speak directly to their former singers and/or students.
The filing of this document is a matter of public record.
In 2022, I set a text by poet Robin Myers to music for a commission from the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers. It was supposed to premiere when they headlined at ACDA in 2023. Even after that premiere was cancelled, the piece was never performed, for reasons that were never shared with me. (I am discussing a premiere with another ensemble now.)
Robin wrote the text as a social media post in September 2018 as a response to Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination hearings and the sexual abuse claims against Kavanaugh that were raised and ultimately dismissed.
Here is Robin’s text:
She said no and we said no and we’re still saying no: we don’t want this, we won’t accept it. And once again, as so often happens, a man, and a group of men (and some women) either won’t listen or don’t care and are doing what they want because they can. We saw this coming, and yet I’m still blindsided by the terrible slap of it all.
What she said.
