Category: music

The Pittsburgh Symphony has not been on the radar screen of those watching orchestral negotiations this year, which makes sense, since the PSO’s contract won’t expire until fall 2006. But the musicians of Pittsburgh have been watching the contract battles quite closely, because their own deal contains an unusual clause, under which they will be rewarded for their willingness to take recent pay cuts with a whopping 23% raise in the final year of their current contract. That figure comes from calculating the average of the pay scales of the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestra, and will take the Pittsburgh scale to $102,403.

Say what you want about the superiority of classical music or the complex intricacies of jazz, but according to novelist Dave Eggers, there’s simply nothing like good old-fashioned American pop music to get the creative juices flowing and make you smarter. “Like many citizens, I think a regular regimen of intense listening to the more literary or even pretentious songwriters should replace standard education… Music-as-learning-tool combines the three most potent sources of persuasion: a trusted voice, sublimity and endless repetition.”

The BBC has snapped up the rights to a TV broadcast of Jerry Springer: The Opera, and will air the satirical look at America’s most over-the-top talk show host in January. A spokeswoman “said it was part of the BBC’s strategy to introduce a new generation of viewers to opera. The BBC have also commissioned six comedy operas from the makers of the hit West End show.”

Leonard Slatkin’s contract won’t be renewed past the 2008 season. “Public information was kept to a polite and restricted minimum. Slatkin’s current contract, which was to expire in 2006, will be extended two years, either as a courtesy to the conductor or to buy the orchestra more time to choose another music director — or, as seems likely, a combination of the two.”

After four years, the Detroit Symphony has decided not to renew Itzhak Perlman’s contract as the orchestra’s principal guest conductor. “Though Perlman, one of the world’s most famous violinists, will no longer hold an official post, his relationship with the DSO — which has blossomed from a risky experiment into a rousing artistic and marketing success — will continue.”

“The debate over the legitimacy of file-sharing networks rages on as the music industry continues its threats to close the services down for good. Meanwhile the millions of downloaders are proving both an advertiser’s dream come true and a branding nightmare.”

It can cost $40,000 to rent Carnegie Hall for the night. What drives up costs? Partly it’s the stagehands’ union. For example, “in the fiscal years ending June 30, 2001, 2002 and 2003, Carnegie stagehand and properties manager Dennis O’Connell made between $309,000 and $344,000 annually, second only to former executive and artistic directors Franz Xaver Ohnesorg and the late Robert Harth. That’s more than some principal players in major symphony orchestras. Three stagehand colleagues came in third, fourth and fifth, earning more than, say, Carnegie’s senior staff or director of development.”

The the band Wilco’s recording company wanted changes in the band’s latest album, the group decided to leave and make its work available over the internet. It’s been a good business move as the group has built a following. Why don’t more musicians embrace downloading? “What if there was a movement to shut down libraries because book publishers and authors were up in arms over the idea that people are reading books for free? It would send a message that books are only for the elite who can afford them. Stop trying to treat music like it’s a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those lawsuits can’t be cheap, either.”

For more than a decade, London’s much-maligned South Bank Arts Centre has been talking about reinventing itself, without much actual progress. But two years ago, with the Barbican Centre unveiling a major upgrade across the Thames, things got serious on the South Bank. “Enter, in 2002, as chairman the former banker and press baron Lord Hollick, whose close links with New Labour and reputation for hard-headedness could only be welcome… Together with the supervisory architect, Rick Mather, they have managed to save the SBC by thrashing out a modified longer-term version of the development which the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and funding bodies find acceptable.”

An all-night bargaining session between the musicians and management of the Philadelphia Orchestra has led to a tentative 3-year agreement, thanks to another intervention from Philadelphia Mayor John Street. The musicians will take a wage freeze in the first year, but by the third year, they will have the highest minimum salary of any orchestra in the US. The musicians’ pensions will also be moved from an in-house plan to the national plan administered by the players’ union, and there will be a temporary reduction in the number of full-time musicians. Mayor Street’s involvement in the talks was applauded by both sides, and it was evident that a deal would not have been possible without his mediation.