Diversity can mean a number of different things; of which the following are most relevant to the work we do:
Race
Ethnicity
National Origin
Sexual Orientation
Gender
Religion/Spirituality
Disability Status
Socio-Economic Class
Age/Generation
Citizenship/immigrant status

Our city is part of who we are. We cannot make a commitment to an equitable future without first recognizing the historic, structural, and ongoing inequities in our home city.

Dal Niente is based in the City of Chicago, which is located on the traditional Native lands of the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa (the Council of Three Fires)—and is today home to members of well over one hundred different tribal nations. Using coercive tactics, the US government manipulated some native nations into signing the 1821 and 1833 treaties of Chicago, in which they ceded their land to the US. To this day, significant portions of downtown Chicago — including venues at which we have performed — exist on land that was not included in those treaties and was not ceded by the Potawatomi nation. More broadly, we acknowledge that native nations throughout present-day North America were decimated via genocidal acts of settler colonialism over the course of centuries.

Chicago is the most racially segregated large city in the United States. Our city suffers from extreme economic inequality, due in part to a shameful history of redlining and disenfranchisement of Black communities following the Great Migration. Colonialism and oppression are ongoing processes, and we are committed to expanding our knowledge, examining our participation in these systems, and reducing our harm.

In spite of generations of historical injustices that have been visited upon its residents, Chicago is home to a remarkable array of thriving communities with origins all around the world, including Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern and Western Europe.

We gratefully acknowledge the inspiration and influence that generations of musicians and artists in the city of Chicago—especially Black experimentalists; musicians working in free jazz, free improvisation, and other musical communities; experimental theater; and performance art—have had on our evolving programming practices and our understanding of what it means to make music. Dal Niente’s musicians are parts of many different musical circles in Chicago, and the diversity of those musical experiences—our teachers, friends, collaborators, venue partners, bandmates, heroes—informs the work that we do.

The majority (but not all) of Dal Niente’s performers were trained in classical music traditions from a young age via private lessons, youth organizations, and US institutions of higher education. Classical music education in the US is usually expensive and difficult to access. Musical instruments and individual lessons are often very expensive; economic barriers to entry remain significant challenges in making musical training widely available.

As of 2023, the composition of our musicians and staff is majority white and majority male, though our membership is 42% female or non-binary and includes people of African, Asian, Jewish, and Latin American descent or origin, and many who identify as queer. Our members hold citizenship in at least four countries and hail from different US regional origins, including the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast, as well as from both rural and urban backgrounds. The ages of our members spans three decades and at least three named generations. Our members are of varying socio-economic classes. The majority of our members are distributed across the near Northwest and North sides, and near West and North suburbs; a third of our members have primary residences outside the Chicago metro area. Dal Niente is not a full-time organization; most of our members have full or part-time jobs with other organizations.

The US classical music industry has historically been and continues to be systemically racist, exclusionary, and exploitative. We agree with George E. Lewis’s analysis that this has often taken the form of a “fake meritocracy” that constitutes “an investment in a certain sector of the society, and a complementary disinvestment in other segments of the population.”

We seek, in the near and medium term, to achieve racial, ethnic, and gender parity in our programming, membership, and operations; and to foster a culture of belonging and access for our members, collaborators, and audience members. We also seek, in the longer term, to question, critique, and undermine the embedded and hidden structures and ideologies of the industries and aesthetic discourses in which we work. Our goal is consciously, pointedly, and permanently to push the US classical music industry towards re-defining the ways in which it operates.

We also acknowledge the extent to which institutional DEI work can easily, if inadvertently, re-center whiteness and result in virtue-signaling—what Sara Ahmed calls the “lip service model of diversity”—in which an institution claims a diverse image in order to increase its market value and reinforce its prominence. We live in a world of multiple, often overlapping injustices; we are committed, continually, to change it.

We recognize this is an evolving process and we welcome feedback, including pointed criticism.

We continually audit our programs to ensure that the artists whose music we perform are diverse in terms of race, gender, national origin, class, disability, and other identities. However, this may be the easiest and most straightforward aspect of addressing diversity in our field. To program a work by a composer does not necessarily reflect sustained engagement with their work, an in-depth rehearsal process, a substantial amount of time on a given concert, or appropriate compensation. Our commitment is not merely to program music by a diverse array of composers, but—in accordance with our mission—to advance their distinct musical voices.

The figures below reflect the number of works by black, ALAANA** and non-male composers we have performed over the last five years**.

2022-2023: 28% black, 68% ALAANA, 40% non-male
2021-2022: 40% black, 64% ALAANA, 37.2% non-male
2020-2021: 29% black, 69% ALAANA, 32.1% non-male
2019-2020: 16% black, 46% ALAANA, 29% non-male
2018-2019: 8% black, 44% ALAANA, 36% non-male

Since 2017, Dal Niente has commissioned and premiered 25 new chamber works:

28% black, 64% ALAANA, 46% non-male

**ALAANA stands for African, Latinx, Asian, Arab and Native American individuals and communities

** numbers as of August 2023

In our field, exclusion often masquerades as meritocracy—the notion that organizations only hire “the best” performers, composers, etc. This systemic exclusion often involves hiring on the basis of personal networks as well as the so-called classical music “pipeline”—education institutions, mentorship programs, etc. This does not mean that there are not a vast array of exceptionally qualified musicians from diverse backgrounds; it does mean that inattentive hiring practices often lead to the perpetration of systemic exclusion and white male privilege.

The makeup of our current staff does not reflect our diversity goals. We are dedicating more resources to seeking out players of diverse backgrounds who may not be in our personal networks. Membership in Dal Niente goes as long as a player wants it to; it is a form of tenure, and our roster of musicians and staff necessarily grows slowly. Dal Niente is committed to ensuring diversity over time at the staff, board, and ensemble levels.

It is vital to our artistic practice that our rehearsal environment is inclusive and collaborative, in explicit contrast to many standard orchestral practices. Our instrumental sections have no internal hierarchies; we have no concertmaster; our conductor does not carry the title “artistic director,” and all musicians in a Dal Niente rehearsal are empowered and encouraged to lead, including musicians who may be serving as substitutes.

Our organizational structure has changed considerably over the life of the ensemble. Dal Niente began its existence as a group of students and young professionals with little organizational experience, little mentorship, and paltry financial resources; it has evolved based on a trial-and-error approach. It would not be accurate for Dal Niente to describe itself as a collective (though we admire peer organizations that are able to cultivate such a structure) given the widely varying personal and professional commitments of our members. However, we work towards a maximally transparent approach to shared governance in decision-making, including:

• Rotating members into positions of leadership on programming committee and the board of directors

• Maintaining an artist liaison for all artists to bring concerns to leadership

• Creating a conflict resolution pathway

• Transparent distribution of information related to the ensemble’s potential engagement, projects, and programming

• Continued discussion of, and work towards, equitable artist fees (see below for a more detailed discussion of this).

We acknowledge several challenges in creating a fully inclusive organization: we are a small staff, most of whom are musicians in the ensemble. We do not have the financial resources to establish and sustain an HR department or a DEI coordinator. To combat these challenges, we strive towards consistency in policies in order to improve our work culture. This includes determining regular schedules for programming committee meetings, staff meetings, and full ensemble meetings.

We believe that funding is a DEI issue because financial resources for arts organizations in the US are not equitably distributed. Here, funding is not based primarily on federal, state, and local resources as it is in some countries. Rather, the US tax code incentivizes individual donors and foundations to give money to organizations such that the donation they make can be written off in their tax filings. Other methods of revenue generation for music organizations in the US include performance fees paid by presenters (such as university music departments, certain venues, and concert series), some governmental grants, and ticket sales. Most cities have only a small number of presenters (as is the case in Chicago), and ticket sales tend to be a minimal part of the budget.

This system of funding US arts organizations has led to extraordinarily dramatic economic inequalities wherein the largest arts institutions have budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and the smallest have budgets in the single-digit thousands. Moreover, the smaller the arts organization, the more difficult it is to substantially increase its budget.

Dal Niente’s operating budget is many orders smaller than major classical music institutions in Chicago; however, we also recognize that many peer organizations do not enjoy a budget as large as ours, which ranges between $250,000 and 350,000 per year. Approximately 60% of our budget comes from donations from individuals and foundations, 30% from presenters, 10% from government sources, and under 1% from ticket sales. Ticket sales account for an especially small percentage because Dal Niente believes it is important to keep ticket prices affordable for all of our audience members; ticket prices at self-presented concerts hover at $25 or below.

Dal Niente’s musicians are not full-time employees, but rather independent contractors; they do not receive healthcare or related benefits from the ensemble and are responsible for self-employment tax. In addition, the music we play is often difficult and requires a large amount of preparation time before rehearsal. Thus, when designing artist fees, we attempt to balance the numerous factors that go into the performance process in addition to the non-full-time nature of the work: time spent preparing, time spent rehearsing, considerations related to travel, considerations related to performance, and physical burdens such as large instrument transportation.

Because Dal Niente is majority able-bodied musicians, we likely have many blindspots related to disability status. As of 2023, we are still living through what experts refer to a “mass disabling event,” i.e., Long COVID, as a result of the recent pandemic. Steps we have taken or will take in order to be more respectful to our disabled members of our community include:

• Making as many concerts as possible accessible to immunocompromised individuals (e.g., through live-streaming)

• Creating a policy to avoid programming pieces that have the potential to make our performers or audiences feel unwelcome or unsafe

• Re-evaluating our relationships with venues for accessibility concerns

• Training our staff on issues related to disability status.