The Sound of Difference

Shortlisted for the BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2025

'Based on a unique ethnographic study of a classical music organisation, The sound of difference provides a rare ‘bottom-up’ account of how inequalities manifest and persist in the arts. Put simply, it is one of the most sophisticated and nuanced critiques of the operationalisation of ‘diversity’ in the cultural sector that I have ever read.'
Anamik Saha, Professor of Race and Media, University of Leeds

'A brilliant analysis of diversity work in the classical music sector. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, Kristina Kolbe asks what happens when the elitist space of classical music seeks to diversify itself. Do diversity discourses in classical music reproduce or challenge existing inequalities? How is it that white middle-class domination perseveres despite an increasingly prominent focus on diversity in the classical music sector? This absolutely timely book is a must-read for anybody with an interest in classical music practice.'
Christina Scharff, Reader in Gender, Media and Culture, King’s College London

'As the central question of her book, Kolbe asks: do such diversity initiatives actually work? What impact have they had on dismantling the pervasive racism, sexism, and classism in the sector? Do they produce transformative institutional and even social change, or are such projects temporary feel-good measures or Band-Aid solutions that only reinforce existing hierarchies and inequalities? Moreover, she asks, what impact did the COVID-19 pandemic and the forced shutdown of live performance have on diverse musicians, particularly freelance culture workers whose situation was already precarious? These are timely and important questions, and Kolbe, a sociologist with a background in musicology and classical music performance, is well positioned to investigate them.'
Music and Musical Performance: An International Journal