How it started
The idea for this website came in 2024, when Sammy Sussman’s article on Matthew Muckey and Liang Wang of the New York Philharmonic broke. This article infuriated us beyond the initial crime of drugging and raping New York Philharmonic member Cara Kizer in 2010. The New York Philharmonic’s response to the allegations was to fire Cara Kizer and her lone supporter, Amanda Stewart. Kizer and Stewart were the first two women ever to be hired into the brass section. In 2018 during the groundswell of “metoo”, Muckey and Wang were fired for unspecified misconduct only to be reinstated in 2020, under union pressure. After Sussman’s story broke in 2024, both players were suspended, with pay.
A common refrain
In the constellation of after-effects of the Sussman article we noticed a common refrain among responses:
We had no idea.
Some people genuinely had no idea that the New York Philharmonic willingly retained musicians that were found by outside investigators to have behaved dishonorably. Some organizations had a responsibility to know but claimed they did not. Oregon Bach Festival engaged Matthew Muckey in 2024, claiming that “[they were] unaware of Mr. Muckey’s 2018 dismissal by the New York Philharmonic, subsequent reinstatement in 2020, and any context surrounding those actions” until being warned by their faculty, after which they terminated Muckey’s contract silently and without apology to the whistleblowers. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center also engaged Muckey in 2024 only to silently remove him from their programs after the Sussman article. It seems impossible to believe that their leadership, also based in New York, would be unaware of the headlines in the New York Times in 2018. Finally, many individual members of the New York Philharmonic had friendly relationships with Muckey and Wang until the Sussman article and claimed to have no idea as to why they were fired in the first place. To these men, the disappearance of Kizer and Stewart and any rumors surrounding the initial dismissals must have felt normal or unimportant.
Our hope for the future
As it turns out, Muckey and Wang are just two of many. We hope that reading these articles grants some insight into the common patterns that allow some of these men to abuse people with impunity for decades. We hope that the people in charge of hiring decisions read these articles and recognize the harm that comes from allowing these men to resign silently, go to other jobs and repeat their crimes. We hope that the individual musicians who are friendly with the accused recognize that no amount of virtuosity or musicianship justifies abuse, and that their allyship protects abusers. We hope that the classical music community rejects this behavior outright so that we may eventually learn to reject it in our politicians and leaders.