Philharmonic Players Accused of Sexual Misconduct No Longer Performing

Matthew Muckey and Liang Wang. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images, Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images

Update, April 18: Neither Liang Wang nor Matthew Muckey will be participating in the Philharmonic “for the time being,” according to an email from New York Philharmonic president and CEO Gary Ginstling to the Philharmonic board, musicians, and staff that was shared with New York. “A decision about their future with the New York Philharmonic will be made in due course,” Ginstling wrote in the email. Additionally, the Philharmonic has engaged law firm Jenner & Block’s Katya Jestin to launch an investigation into the culture of the Philharmonic. “I pledge to share the recommendations with our board, our staff and our musicians as well as with the general public,” Ginstling said. Along with the investigation, the Philharmonic is aiming to alter its audition and tenure-review processes to increase “transparency, oversight and equity.”

Original story, published April 16, follows:

Liang Wang and Matthew Muckey, the two New York Philharmonic players featured in a New York article from April 12 about a sexual-assault scandal at the orchestra, are no longer rehearsing or performing with the Philharmonic, the New York Times reported on April 15. The Philharmonic attempted to fire Wang, the principal oboist, and Muckey, the associate principal trumpet, in 2018, but the firing was reversed by an independent arbitrator after they filed a grievance with the players’ union, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, in 2020. Now, however, current Local 802 president Sara Cutler seems in favor of further action, calling the removal of Wang and Muckey “good first steps but they can’t be the last,” in a statement to the Times. She added, “I am horrified by what was in the story and we are committing the full resources of Local 802 to erase the culture of complicity that has raged at the N.Y. Philharmonic for too long.”

The details of allegations first reported by New York centered around Cara Kizer, formerly a horn player at the Philharmonic, who says she was drugged and sexually assaulted by Muckey in 2010 while in Vail, Colorado. Kizer had joined the men for a glass of wine in a colleague’s apartment while she waited for her husband to arrive on a delayed flight. She has no memory of what happened to her after drinking the wine, but she woke up naked next to Muckey and found her tampon had been pushed deeply inside her. She told police at the time that she suspected she’d been sexually assaulted. The Philharmonic attempted to fire Wang and Muckey in 2018, but they were reinstated in 2020.

Both Wang and Muckey’s lawyers are confident that their clients will return to the Philharmonic, given the previous ruling by the union, according to the Times. Gary Ginstling, the current president of the Philharmonic, did not discuss whether or not he would again try to fire Wang and Muckey but did mention the difficulties to the Times, noting Wang and Muckey had been previously reinstated. “The determination was through binding arbitration,” Ginstling said. “Binding is the key word.”