Blair Tindall, the American oboist whose salacious 2005 memoir Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music lifted the veil on party culture, sexual exploitation and drug-use in the sector, has died in Los Angeles. She was 63.

Speaking to Limelight in a 2020 interview, she discussed the television adaptation of the novel.

“Orchestras, at least in the US, are kind of an elite social club, and the musicians are an unfortunate side-effect. They have to have the musicians to have the social club and have parties and everything. So people just don’t realise we’re actual people.”

After collecting a prize in the 1988 Lucarelli Competition for Solo Oboists, Tindall played in a number of ensembles and orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony and the New York City Ballet and Opera Orchestras. She was also a regular in New York’s musical theatre pit orchestras (Miss Saigon and Les Miserables) and movie score ensembles.

After becoming disenchanted with the music business, Tindall turned her hand to journalism, studying at Stanford before relocating to the West Coast and working for The San Francisco Examiner. She wrote for numerous publications as a freelancer.