The audience for traditional classical music is overwhelmingly caucasian, whether in Europe or North America, and despite paying frequent lip service to the vague concept of “diversity,” few practitioners of the art have made any serious attempts to widen the appeal of the genre. So why does classical music receive such a huge percentage of available public arts funding? “This has always been the case, but now that cultural diversity has moved to the top of the funding agenda, it’s become a serious political embarrassment. There’s something disquieting, in 2003, about the sight of an all-white orchestra playing to an all-white audience.”