In the new issue of Standpoint magazine, I have written a short essay on the aftermath and implications of the John Galliano imbroglio at Christian Dior.
Much ink has been spilled on the subject. I have tried to provide cultural context. It is my view, expressed
elsewhere, that a floodgate has been opened. Anti-semitism has become once again socially admissible. The consequences are unforseeable.
You can read the new essay
here.
I have received an email from Deborah Cheyne, a viola player in the OSB and president of the Sindicato dos Músicos Profissionais do Rio de Janeiro, clarifying the latest situation. She was writing also on behalf of Luzer Machtyngier, president of the OSB musicians.
Here’s what Deborah has to say:
On Monday, we had a final round of negotiation. Prior to it, we attended a call
from the Ministry of Labour to sit in a round table with the ministry’s
mediator, where a proposal was offered. The employer’s side did not show
up.
The proposal was, to review the performance evaluation test with the
collaboration of the Ministery of Labour. This was a personal proposal of the
Minister, and the FOSB declined it.
Later this day, a informal and definitive
negotiation happened between Union and FOSB.
The FOSB offered a “plan of
voluntary dismissal” and the musicians refused it, believing that this plan only
transfers the onus of dismissing such a large number of
musicians.
On Tuesday, the management called and/or communicated by e-mail,
31 musicians to attend to the office next day. Two of them attended the call
and they were communicated about their dismissal. The other 29 did not
appear. Which does not mean that they will not be fired, it is just a matter or
time.
Nine musicians received a statement to attend a re-scheduled audition,
since they were on medical license before. Four musicians did not receive any
communication at all till this moment. Calculating, this means 44 musicians.
At this moment 31 will be soon or later be dismissed for sure.
To my European eyes, this kind of confrontation management belongs to a very dark and distant era.
In the current issue of The Strad, I give encouragement to young recitalists who face half-empty halls, scattered with the elderly and disinterested (and that’s just their families).
Music has never shirked engagement with popular culture and, since stand-up is now one of the busiest draws at the box office, why shouldn’t a good string player entertain his or her audience in other ways? Break a lance. Crack a smile.
Here’s part of what I suggest.
Forget what the Blessed Dorothy told you in Juilliard
Cathedral never to crack a smile on stage and always to thank (preferably, to
shag) the conductor. Those days are over. String players need to get with the
rhythm and act as if they inhabit the same millennium as the rest of us. If
that means cracking a few warm-up quips, so be it. In a year or two, you may
have enough material for a Saturday-night TV show.
Your thoughts, please?
Read all about it in The Strad.
Rumours have been swirling for months and we have been unable to report them without hard evidence. here’s some background from Der
Spiegel (in English)
The charges are fraud and misappropriation.
Late yesterday, I received the following analysis of funding cuts from a distinguished and successful orchestral manager who has asked to remain anonymous. His statistics are deadly accurate and mortally revealing.
The question he puts is simple: if the ACE, contrary to its assertions, has merely spread equal misery across all orchestras – who needs an Arts Council at all? The job could be automated.
Here is his report:
Major Orchestras in England
ACE
Grants have now been determined up to
2014/2015
By that
time grants will be:
Philharmonia £2,131k
LSO £2,302k
LPO £2,131k
RPO £987k
CBSO £2,278k
RLPO £2,172k
Halle £2,174k
Bournemouth £2,666k
In other
words, all will receive roughly the same (apart from RPO)- irrespective of their
geography or artistic policies.
All represent a cut of around 11% in real
terms – equal misery for all which could actually have been determined by one
person with a calculator.
Questions
–
- What’s the point of all the
form- filling that all these orchestras had to undertake in order to bid
for development funding or demonstrate
plans for innovation and adventure
or claim distinction as beacons of excellence which need to be
nurtured.
- Where’s the evidence of any
assessment or judgement behind these grant figures?
- Where’s the evidence of any
real orchestral strategy for the country?
Exactly
the same thing happened in 1999 when orchestras drowned themselves in paper
setting out their strategies and plans which resulted in no changes whatever.
Important Question
Now that
the Arts Council have set the grants for the next four years, what’s the point
of employing a Music Department?
What’s it
going to DO?
How many
more years of monitoring and assessing are there to be without any real change in structure of the
orchestral scene which has been the fundamentally the same for half a century?
Caution
And
whilst everyone in the business breathes a sigh of relief that it “could be
worse”, give some thought to the longer term implications of all this. For how
long will we be able to expect people to devote their careers to playing in
orchestras at the highest level now expected for £28k per annum in a contract
orchestra or £93 per day as a freelance? And in view of the above
across-the-board cuts these musicians can expect these figures to go down in
real terms to something like £25k and £83.
(NL: Great British orchestras, indeed.)
One of the most irritating responses to the Arts Council’s grant allocations has come from company chiefs like the South Bank’s Jude Kelly (in the Guardian today) who describe their diminished cut or slight increase as ‘a vote of confidence’ in the work they are doing.
A vote for what, and by whom? Jude ought to know as well as anyone that the process by which these cuts were made was not rational or empirical. Many of the decisions were l
ast-minute fudges. Her own South Bank, an Arts Council protectorate, was meant to get off even more lightly than it did – but, after the final meeting, when all C
ouncil members had gone home
, executive officers led by Alan Davey found a million-plus hole in the budget. The only way they could plug it was by a clawback from the South Bank, amid assurances that all would be put to rights once the present fuss had died down.
As I said last night on
BBC Front Row, the methodology of Arts Council funding stands totally discredited. We need to get away from the Prize Day hysteria and adopt something closer to the German model, where funding is managed quietly, consensually and, on the whole, without much corruption or mutual back-scratching.
When we have a Government that is bold enough to address real reforms, it should consult someone like Peter Jonas, former head of ENO and the Bavarian State Opera, on how to make the arts work without so much otiose and artificial fuss.
Riccardo Muti’s back – well ahead of schedule and on top of his game.
He tells Andrew Patner in the
Sun-Times that seven weeks was quite long enough to get over heart surgery and a broken jaw. He has been left with a pronounced sibilance in his speech, but has been assured that it will fade in due course. If I were a player in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, I wouldn’t ask the maestro in rehearsal where that hissing noise is coming from.
The full interview will appear at the weekend.
photo: Tom Cruze~Sun-Times, all rights reserved
