Category: music

It is notoriously difficult to fire an orchestra musician in the U.S. A strict tenure system and decades of tradition make it a tremendous challenge to remove a musician who is no longer pulling his/her weight, and more often than not, a music director is reduced to pleading with substandard musicians to simply retire, rather than force the organization to begin the long, drawn-out process of dismissing them. Ordinarily, the public never hears about such internal confrontations, but in Chicago, where the music director has often been heard to condemn the tenure system, an unusual number of recently announced ‘retirements’ have brought the issue to the fore.

A $100 million concert hall going up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. is 40 percent complete, but money has been an issue even during construction. But this week, $4.85 million in new pledges came in from wealthy supporters of the new hall, getting organizers close to their funding goal. The Music Center at Strathmore, when complete, will host a variety of musical ensembles, including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Major orchestral tours, such as the one just completed by the San Francisco Symphony, are massively complicated and expensive affairs, involving the transport of over a hundred individuals, instruments, and other equipment. Halls must be booked, tickets must be sold or their cost made up, and hotel rooms must meet the exacting standards of the musicians’ contract. Says critic Joshua Kosman, “You might think a project like that would be expendable, especially in these lean financial times. You’d be wrong.”

“Unable to meet Friday’s payroll for musicians and staff, the San Antonio Symphony has laid off nonessential office workers and may file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors next week.” The move comes less than a month after the SAS cut short its season to save money and allow its board a chance to attempt to keep the organization afloat. Prior to the shutdown, symphony musicians had agreed to be paid late, or not at all, for several weeks in an effort to rally the community around the embattled ensemble.

“The Dale Warland Singers, a bedrock of Twin Cities culture for three decades and regarded among America’s most influential choirs, will no longer perform after the group’s namesake steps down as director following the 2003-04 season. Dale Warland, 71, told his singers Thursday night he is leaving the group, which he formed in 1972, to concentrate on teaching and guest-conducting opportunities around the country and spend more time with family. The singers, who had long braced themselves for Warland’s inevitable departure, were stunned to learn the choir is disbanding.”

So the Metropolitan Opera’s radio broadcasts are endangered. That is sad news, writes John Rockwell. But along with the many benefits the broadcasts have produced, they have also distorted Americans’ sense of (and taste for) opera. Onne might suggest that “millions of American opera lovers have been tilted toward a perception of opera as a voice-driven auditory experience. For them, the best stage production is imaginary: it doesn’t so much adhere to the intentions of the composer as remain neutrally compatible with a listener’s own made-up stage pictures. And in the comfortable confines of the home or the car, the music is usually heard without libretto or titles, as a sensual experience in melody, harmony and a foreign tongue.”

The musicians of the Louisville Orchestra have rejected a management proposal which included wage cuts and a shorter season, and the orchestra says it may file for bankruptcy as early as next week. “The orchestra has approximately $1.3 million in bank debt, with $800,000 of that past due and the balance due early next week,” according to its board chairman, who also points out that the ensemble’s staff and conductors have taken a 10% pay cut, which is larger than that being asked of the musicians. The musicians claim that they have made many concessions over the last decade in an effort to help the organization financially.

“The Fund for the Arts has committed $900,000 in special support to the financially strapped Louisville Orchestra over the next two years, but only if the orchestra produces a balanced budget for that period. The orchestra continues to say it can’t balance the budget without substantial concessions from its musicians.”

The Florida Orchestra (Tampa) is projecting a $600,000 deficit when its books close later this month. “The orchestra, with a budget of $8.5-million, launched a campaign in April to raise $500,000 to match a grant of $500,000 from anonymous donors for a total of $1-million. The campaign has been a success.”

Britain’s last chain of vinyl record shops has gone out of business. “The chain ran 40 shops in its 1980s heyday, mostly in the north-west and East Anglia but covering the whole country. In recent years it has been the only indy rival to the big multiples like Virgin and HMV.”