Blockages to Overcome Blindness

Blind auditions assist blind ambitions - and overcome blind prejudice - as musicians seek to join the world’s top orchestras.
Aspirants once auditioned in full-view of their assessors, but blind auditions now open wider doors. Experts always suspected that women lacked the lungpower needed for brass or woodwind instruments - until 1984, when Julie Landsman climaxed her blind audition by blowing a sustained high C and became New York Metropolitan Opera’s first full-time female French horn player. She happily relives her all-male judges’ startled reaction on realising they’d chosen a woman: “I loved it! Without that screen their eyes would have affected their ears!”

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