In the 1970s, jazz bassist and clinical psychologist Art Davis unsuccessfully filed suit against the New York Philharmonic for racial discrimination.
Although his suit failed, his efforts have been credited for helping pave the way to the current system of blind auditions for orchestras.
Celibidache was not invited to give testimony at the trials due to a lack of substantiated criticism.
[4] According to a widely cited 2001 study by Cecilia Rouse of Princeton and Claudia Goldin of Harvard, the introduction of blind auditions to American symphony orchestras increased the probability that a woman would advance from preliminary rounds by 50 percent.
Rouse and Goldin attribute about 30 percent of this gain to the advent of blind auditions, although they admit that their "estimates have large standard errors and at least one persistent effect in the opposite direction.