"They said that the music we play is not diverse enough because there are not enough women and people of color among the composers," said the cellist.

The members of the acclaimed American string quartet, the DaPonte String Quartet, have been fired by the NGO they founded, but which is formally considered their employer, the Friends of the DaPonte String Quartet, reports TheStrad . According to cellist Myles Jordan, the board of trustees of the foundation has been trying more and more intensively to have a say in their repertoire in the recent period, especially because the list of authors played was not considered "diverse enough".

They said that the music we play is not diverse enough because there are not enough women and people of color among the authors. It's true that we play most of the music by dead white European men, but that's what we were taught," Jordan commented on the matter.

Friends of the DaPonte String Quartet has announced that it will change its name to Chamber Music Maine after firing the musicians and plans to work with new artists.

The NGO was created by the musicians in order to have a legal channel to receive the support of their fans, from which they lived and worked. The non-profit foundation form made it possible for classical music fans to deduct the amount of donations from their taxes. The foundation was named after the band in order to make it clear what the donors are giving the money for. However, the board of trustees who fired them and changed the name of the organization kept all the money.

The string quartet just wrote a post on Facebook about the fact that the NGO operating under the new name still feels it is legitimate to keep the donations intended for them, to which they do not have access for the time being. At the same time, they did not give up, they created a new foundation to collect grants and continue to play concerts.

Source: Mandarin

2022 plus:

Slowly, one is no longer surprised by the aggressiveness of the minority rainbow company. On the other hand, it is rather worrying that this violent march could lead to the fact that in a decade, almost no one knows who Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi were, and we could list the great composers, but the names of those with distorted brains who throw musical notes together will have to be known to everyone. The company, lost in cultured diversity, can report that the time of "100-member string quartets" is over, they are already a thing of the past.   

Opening image: Facebook