Two players were fired for sexual misconduct.
Why were they allowed back in the orchestra?
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Vail Valley Music Festival.
The concert, titled German Masters, featured music by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schubert, and Wagner.
More than 100 musicians and staff from the orchestra had come to town for the performance.
Among them was Cara Kizer, one of the newest members of the ensemble.
She was only the second woman to win a job in the Philharmonics brass section in the organizations history.
In later police interviews, colleagues described Muckey and Wang as immature.
Muckey had been seen on tour with different women; one colleague described Wang as sleazy.
You dont ever think your colleagues are going to do something nefarious, Kizer told me.
She texted her husband and told him she was going to stay out with friends.
She added that her phone was running out of battery.
Kizer alleged that Wang brought her a glass of red wine.
Wang later told the police that Kizer got her own wine.
What was not disputed is that Kizer has no memories of what happened after she drank from that glass.
The account that follows is based on interviews with Kizer, her friends and colleagues, and law-enforcement officials.
According to Kizer, she woke up the morning after the concert in Muckeys bed, naked.
She felt groggy and sick and there were red vomit stains on the floor around the bed.
She went into the bathroom and wrapped herself in a light-purple towel.
She found her pants in a drawer with Muckeys pants and her shirt in the washing machine downstairs.
When she returned to the bedroom, Muckey was awake.
He handed Kizer her underwear, saying that he found it in the bedsheets.
As he drove her back to her hotel, Kizer asked Muckey what had happened the previous night.
Kizer noticed that he wouldnt make eye contact with her.
He wouldnt say anything, Kizer recalled, except I have to go meet my dad.
When Kizer returned to her hotel, she found her husband sleeping with his cell phone beside him.
He had texted her over and over during the previous evening.
Kizer decided to shower before waking him up.
She told the police that at that moment, my heart jumped up in my throat.
In an interview, he told me she seemed like she was in shock.
They went together to the hotel lobby, where Kizer met Amanda Stewart, a trombonist for the orchestra.
I still remember that scene, Stewart told me.
She was visibly shaking, just so upset.
After Kizer told her what happened, Stewart urged her to go to the police.
He went back to the hotel room and found the tampon in the garbage.
He placed it in a coffee cup, hoping to turn it over to the police.
Kizer, however, didnt want to skip rehearsal that evening.
The doctor in turn called the Vail police, which sent an officer to pick Kizer up.
She asked the patrol car to stop a few hundred feet down the road to be away from everybody.
The officer placed Kizers French horn in the back of the vehicle, and they drove away.
At the station, Kizer spoke with a detective named Rusty Jacobs, a 20-year veteran of the department.
He asked Kizer to summarize what had happened to her.
After hearing her story, he asked if she would call Muckey from a phone at his desk.
Muckey spent most of the phone call saying that he couldnt remember what happened between them.
Later, he would tell Jacobs that he and Kizer had indeed had sex but it was consensual.
That would have been the most painful, uncomfortable experience ever.
No consenting woman would do that.
Two days later, on June 27, a nurse collected a DNA sample from Muckey.
Jacobs spoke with six Philharmonic musicians and staff about Kizer, Muckey, and Wang.
Jacobs asked whether they would be capable of drugging someone to commit a crime.
Yes, the man replied, I could see that.
At concerts and rehearsals, however, she still had to play alongside him.
In September, Kizer and her husband attended a get-together with a few other members of the orchestra.
Kizer was shocked that she was only hearing about this accusation now.
There were all these stories floating around, she said.
Yet no one warned us.
The New York Philharmonic wields an enormous influence on the cultural life of the city.
The organization has long struggled with gender diversity.
The orchestras brass section has been particularly slow to modernize.
Within this hierarchical and unequal framework, Kizer occupied a particularly vulnerable position in the fall of 2010.
As a new hire, her job was probationary.
Like all musicians, she would have to be granted tenure by a committee made up of her colleagues.
The process was long, involving nearly two years of deliberations before a final vote.
Stewart faced her own tenure hearing, in February 2011.
(Three people confirmed that Stewart told them about this conversation at the time.
Baer denies he said this to Stewart.)
Around Thanksgiving 2010, an emergency meeting was called by members of Stewarts tenure committee.
She would not be receiving tenure.
She believed that taking the photo in Europe was the nail in my coffin.
There was no evidence, however, that Kizer had been drugged.
Wang denied that he had given Kizer anything, and Muckey continued to insist that the sex was consensual.
Jacobs worried that his investigation had reached a dead end.
Kizer began researching date-rape drugs.
On February 9, 2011, she got the results.
A six-centimeter hair sample was positive for the presence of GHB.
Later testing suggested the exposure occurred around the month of the alleged assault.
For me, it was like, Oh my God, this is it, Kizer said.
She was more convinced than ever that she had been drugged.
Jacobs was told that the hair-follicle test did not meet the standards for litigation.
(One forensic toxicologist called the practice of testing for date-rape drugs in hair follicles controversial.)
I finally have this information, and now all these other people are screwing it up, Kizer said.
Kizer said that Kirwan wouldnt make eye contact.
He was looking down, fiddling with a paperclip, Kizer said.
He just looked so disinterested.
(Clune wasnt involved with Kizers case.)
Muckey and Wang remained in the orchestra; Kizer and Stewart both ended up leaving New York altogether.
The organization hired Barbara S. Jones, a former federal judge, to conduct an independent investigation.
(Muckey and Wang denied the allegations.)
Over a six-month, $336,573 investigation, Jones interviewed 22 individuals and reviewed extensive documentary evidence.
The Philharmonic concluded that the two men had engaged in misconduct warranting their termination.
Muckey and Wang were fired in September 2018.
Nearly all the details of the investigation were withheld from the public.
A New YorkTimesarticleon the subject was headlined New York Philharmonic Dismisses 2 Players for Unspecified Misconduct.
A spokesperson for Local 802 defended the decision.
Kizer testified, as did other alleged victims.
Blochs review used a higher bar, that of clear and convincing evidence.
The Philharmonic released a statement that it was profoundly disappointed by the decision.
Shortly afterward, Muckey and Wang were reinstated to their positions.
This past January, the New York Philharmonic celebrated the 100th anniversary of its Young Peoples Concerts series.
Both the Philharmonic and Local 802 have recently taken steps to reform their grievance processes.
They were saying that their playing lacked musicality and that it was a cultural thing, she said.
There was no apparent awareness or concern that it might not be appropriate.
But even his best efforts likely wont change the reality that Muckey and Wang remain active in the ensemble.
I do not feel safe so I avoid them at all costs.
One tenured female member of the orchestra agreed that the silence about what happened in Vail is particularly disturbing.
Given the allegation of drugging, are women safe when we go on tour?
Its now been more than a decade since Kizer and Stewart left the Philharmonic.
Both played with orchestras around the country; Kizer spent several years with the Seattle Symphony.
In 2014, she and her husband divorced, and a few years later she settled in St. Louis.
She and Stewart had stayed in touch over the years, and eventually they started dating.
In 2018, they bought a house together.
Auditions for assistant principal and utility horn at the Philharmonic Kizers former job were held last month.
The post has been vacant for years.
Initialreporting for this story was funded by the Investigative Reporting Workshop.
