The most significant rejection in my life is my gender.

I studied conducting at the conservatory and realized I could jump over my shadow daily, but I will never become a conductor in Estonia. At the beginning of the 2000s, Estonia went through a superficial phase where men had thick necks, and women were like blondies jumping out of a porn movie. It was tough for both men and women. Men had to be rich and women beautiful.

I quite consciously ran away from Estonia, but that running away was automatically accompanied by the opinion that if you go abroad, you go to marry a man there. No one was interested in what I was doing or why I was in Denmark.

In 2018, conductor Kristjan Järvi started doing a traditional New Year’s concert at the National Opera of Estonia. He created an excellent program combining modern Estonian classical music with talented pop and jazz music. At the same time, I had already received two music awards in Denmark. I had a name there but was not yet known in Estonia. Two of my compositions were also on the program, which I was to perform with the orchestra.

However, for some reason, the producer of this project had a powerful desire to show me who is the fundamental character of the project. So we had our first concert in Pärnu, and she practiced workplace bullying openly and behind my back already there. It was quite a scary thing to experience. Everyone watched, but nothing was done or said. It was still a time when such a thing was accepted in Estonia. Not anymore. And then, when we arrived in Tallinn, where there was a live broadcast of this New Year’s concert on national television, and right before I was about to go on stage to perform my piece of music, this producer put her hand on my shoulder and said the sentence I will remember for the rest of my life: “Maria, you’re just fucking disgusting to watch on stage. Do you even know how to stand or not?” With that sentence said, I went on stage.

You can tell from this concert recording that I cry while playing it. I couldn’t do anything. This was one of the most challenging moments in my career, where I had to maintain my composure. If it would have been just this one sentence before going on stage, but it was preceded by more prolonged bullying and teasing. The producer started it, but eventually, it spread among the collective. So that at one point, voices started coming from among the violins section saying, this is a crap song, for example. So unprofessional, arrogant and rejective. 

When it happened to me, I felt it would have been a fruitless struggle to resist. I understood how I was treated was awful, but everyone was looking like, what’s wrong with you? So be a little more normal on stage! Try to look a bit better then, huh? So why don’t I put on a dress? Or why do I have to stand my legs apart on stage? This producer had a problem that I played the saxophone with my legs apart.

I must have been so emotionally numb that I couldn’t say anything in my defence. 

The producer wouldn’t have said that to a man prone to obesity or with messy hair. It was pure sexism. Gendered anger. Why do women somehow try to stall down those who are stronger?

That producer was let go years later, but not because of me.