Immigrants run the Seattle Symphony. They helm, conduct, and compose the Seattle Symphony. President and CEO Simon Woods hails from England. Music director Ludovic Morlot comes from France. And immigrants make up one quarter of the orchestra, which is nearly double the demographic representation, percentage-wise, of the immigrant population in Washington.
The stories of the symphony’s musicians are as varied as the countries from which they hail. Many fled the anti-Semitism and economic depression of the crumbling USSR. One spent thousands of dollars and years of his life waiting to acquire visas, while others busked the streets of Rome for a year before waltzing into New York. All are highly educated, incredibly trained musicians working at the top of their game for the state’s largest art institution, one that’s been winning Grammys for the quality of its recordings.
During this election cycle, Donald Trump has painted Mexican and Syrian immigrants as terrorist criminals who want to take our jobs. The resulting conversations around the impact of immigrants has rightly focused on dispelling the racist assumptions underlying these claims and debunking the lies about the economic contributions immigrants make to this country.
Those contributions, by the way, are substantial. According to a recent report from New American Economy, one-eighth of Washingtonians were born abroad. These immigrants create jobs (approximately 141,483 people work for immigrants in this state), wield tremendous spending power (just south of $23 billion), and pay billions in state and federal taxes ($2.4 billion and $5.7 billion, respectively).
But less attention has been paid to the way immigrants enrich Washington’s cultural life, where fresh ideas and new perspectives are desperately needed.
