Jeri Lynne Johnson knows rejection. Not just the normal kind but slams of the door based in gender and racial bias.
After winning what’s now known as the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship in 2005, the Black female conductor was a finalist for three positions — and wasn’t hired for any of them. She recalls one of the search committee chairs being forthright in a follow-up conversation: “You just don’t look like what our audience expects the ‘maestro’ to look like.”
