Jeff Wang Blog

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When Abbie Conant auditioned for the Munich Philharmonics, she played a masterful piece on the trombone in a blind audition.

The judges could only base their decisions on what they heard and felt, not what they saw. And what they heard and felt was so magical that they stopped the auditions halfway, with the head executive chanting that he wanted this particular musician.

Yet, when the curtain was revealed, the judges were shocked to see a woman behind the scene.

Years went by and Abbie struggled with sexism, often getting demoted from her positions and receiving a pay gap, despite her being, objectively, the best trombonist in the orchestra when judged fairly for her music capability in a blind test.

What those judges couldn’t get over was the fact that they allowed their unfounded bias to get in the way of something that is magical.

If you do a blind test, you need to accept the results, whether you like them, wanted them, or expected them or not.

If you have a certain opinion on something, but statistics and science prove you wrong, you need to accept that your opinion is also wrong.

If you can’t look at life fairly, then life won’t be fair back to you, and it never is.

So yes, a lot of parts of life isn’t fair. But when you can do a blind test and let the world hear the beauty that can come from a female musician, then you need to do that blind audition.