Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through Music, Performance, and the Science of Time

by Natalie Hodges

Yet, according to a 2016 diversity report conducted by the League of American Orchestras, only about 9 percent of professional orchestral musicians identify as Asian or Pacific Islander. Indeed, the predominating group in classical music remains Caucasian, and the scholar Mari Yoshihara, in her 2007 book Musicians from a Different Shore, is quick to note the implications of that asymmetry between image and reality—that “[s]uch an exaggerated perception of Asian dominance in classical music suggests that Asian musicians are racially marked.” “Because classical music is associated with Western high culture and because the performance of classical music requires many years of disciplined training,” she writes, “Asians’ success in this field is often thought to exemplify their assimilation into Euro-american culture,” their incorporation into a “model minority: those who rise in the existing social structure through hard work and attain success in Western culture without posing a direct challenge to the economic and political status quo.”