Abbie Conant

Abbie Conant is a Juilliard trained Trombone player who is known for her fight against gender discrimination with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.

I figured this blog would be a great place to share her story.

Abbie Conant took a screen audition in 1980 with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and won the principal trombone position. This is a snippet from an article You Sound Like a Ladies' Orchestra called Sixteen is a Number!

In 1980 Ms. Abbie Conant applied for eleven trombone positions advertised in Germany.  She received only one audition invitation: a letter from the Munich Philharmonic addressed to a Herr Abbie Conant.(1)

She auditioned on June 19, 1980 and competed against 32 men. The first round was held behind a screen.  She was sixteenth to play and no candidates who played after her were selected for the second round.  When the finalists’ numbers were called, there was amazement that trombone sixteen was a woman.  In the second and third rounds, done without a screen, she clearly defeated her male opponents, and the orchestra voted to hire her.

According to orchestra chairman Deinhardt Goritski, general music director Celibidache was opposed to employing her(2), but he was new with the orchestra and not yet in a position to overrule it.  He was, for example, still bargaining with the city about demands he wanted, and threatening to leave if they were not fulfilled.

One change was made.  In the thirteen years since then, no more Munich Philharmonic auditions have been held behind a screen.(3)  

This piece from the article is just the beginning of her story. Mrs. Conant spent 11 years in court battling this case of discrimination and had it documented by her husband William Osborne. This document, as you can see in the short snippet I provided, has footnotes from 89 actual court records that support his article. This main document has been used to create many articles and newspapers focusing on her case. After she won this long court case, she won a full-tenured Professor job at the University of Music in Germany and ended up leaving the orchestra in 1993. She now teaches masterclasses around the world and works on music theater music for trombone.