Trombonist Abbie Conant Has The Brass To Succeed

----------------------------------------------------------------- Trombonist in Seattle

Abbie Conant will make three Seattle appearances, sponsored by the University of Washington and Brass Unlimited: Three Band Concert, 8 p.m. tomorrow Ingraham High School, 1819 N. 135th St., with Boeing Employees Concert Band, Seattle Temple Brass Band of the Salvation Army and Seattle Civic Band, Jo-Ann Christen conducting ($5); Trombone Master Class, 1 p.m. Saturday, UW Brechemin Auditorium (reception following, 282-5471); and a Music Theater Concert, 3 p.m. Sunday, Brechemin Auditorium, featuring "Miriam," by William Osborne, with Conant and The Wasteland Company (free). -----------------------------------------------------------------

It took Abbie Conant from 1980 to 1993 to win her case.

The American-born trombonist has become a byword in international musical circles for her bizarre saga of sexual discrimination at the Munich Philharmonic, almost as much as for the musical ability that won her solo trombone positions and a conservatory faculty position.

And now, Seattle audiences will have an opportunity to see and hear an artistic version of her battle: the performance-art piece "Miriam," written by Conant's husband, composer William Osborne, and performed by the trombonist herself in a free event Sunday at the University of Washington.

The story is certainly as surreal as any performance-art piece. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Conant won a job as solo trombonist of the Royal Opera of Turin (Italy) in 1979, and the next year she was invited to audition - as "Herr Abbie Conant" - for the solo trombone position at the Munich Philharmonic.

Auditioning behind a screen, Conant was the unanimous first choice of the auditioners, who were aghast to discover afterward that they had hired a woman. The Munich music director, Sergiu Celibidache, was even more shocked, though he was unable to find anything in her playing to object to during her probationary year with the orchestra.

When that year was up, Celibidache wanted to demote her to second trombone, for no other reason than "We need a man for solo trombone." In 1982, she was officially demoted, and filed a lawsuit with the City of Munich (since the philharmonic is a municipal orchestra) to regain her position. Orchestra representatives claimed Conant did not "possess the necessary strength to be a leader of the trombone section," and she had to submit to extensive medical testing to prove otherwise: examinations of the rib cage and chest, blood tests, and tests for lung capacity and speed of inhalation and exhalation.

Conant was again evaluated, this time by the president of the German Trombone Association, who praised her technique, her musculature, her endurance, breath volume and "enormously solid nerves."

Reduced salary

Forced to return her to the solo trombone spot, the philharmonic then refused to give her back pay for the two additional years it took to get a ruling from a judge. Conant was then placed in a lower salary group than her 15 (male) solo wind colleagues. More legal battles and appeals ensued until she finally won the right to be placed in the same pay group as her male colleagues. Having made her point, Conant then left the orchestra after accepting a tenured faculty position at the State Conservatory of Music in Trossingen.

Is the Munich Philharmonic now a bastion of equal opportunity? Don't count on it. The orchestra hired a 17-year-old male with no orchestral experience as her replacement. And they have never used a screen in auditions since auditioning Conant in 1980, thus effectively stopping any further feminist raids on the available orchestra positions.

Film documents struggle

But Conant has still made her mark. Berlin filmmaker Brenda Parkerson has made an 82-minute musical and documentary, "Abbie Get Your Gun," detailing the legal battles in the form of a cabaret burlesque in both German and English, and the film has been shown on national German television and in this country, including at New York's Museum of Modern Art just last month.

The film, and the performance piece "Miriam," may prove instructive to the American musical community, where few women have ventured (or been allowed to venture) into trombone positions in major orchestras. The New York Philharmonic has a woman trombonist; so do the orchestras of Pittsburgh and San Diego. Only three positions - and one of them, in Pittsburgh, is reportedly fighting a demotion similar to Conant's.

Even in the 1990s, apparently, it takes a lot of brass for a woman musician to choose the trombone.