PHILADELPHIA — When Jeri Lynne Johnson made it to the finals of an orchestra tryout in California and didn’t get the job, she didn’t think much of it.
“It happens. It’s like dating — you kind of work or you don’t,” says Johnson of the chemistry that gets tested when a conductor stands before an orchestra for the first time.
But when Philadelphia-based Johnson asked the head of the selection committee what she could have done differently, “He said, ‘We just didn’t know how to market you. You don’t look like what our audience expects a maestro to look like.’”
