When the Minnesota Orchestra locked out its musicians in October 2012, two considerations weighed high in the board’s mind. One was that Minnesota paid well above the going rate to attract top players. The other was that, a month earlier, players in the Atlanta symphony had agreed after a short lockout to a 14 percent pay cut. The money men of Minnesota reckoned they could quickly force the same sort of deal.
Well, it didn’t work out that way. In part, because the musicians were prepared to sit it out for 15 months until the board gave way and, in part, because a very substantial chunk of the community and the audience saw the need to maintain high wages as a guarantee of player quality. The players felt supported. That encouraged them to hold out.
Atlanta was unimpressed. Despite making a pledge that the 14 percent was a one-time-only cut, the board and president set about planning for a second lockout, stalling through eight months of negotiations with offers the players could only refuse. On the table, we hear, was this:
Year 1: 0 % increase in salary
Year 2: 1% increase in salary
Year 3: 1.5% increase in salary
Year 4: 2% increase in salary
These tiny increases, however, were to be paid at the expense of deep cuts in the health benefits package which would have left every player worse off. Actual salaries would be the same in 2018 as they were in 2011, but the players would pay much more for their health cover.
What Atlanta was telling its players was that the 2012 one-time-only cut was just a sampler. From now on it was going to be cuts all the way – not just in pay but in jobs as well, with one-third of the orchestra to be removed by natural or unnatural causes.
It was an offer the players had to refuse, and one which the company did not expect them to accept. Labor lawyer Kevin Case writes: ‘As an attorney, I cannot envision any scenario in which I would advise my musician or union clients to accept the kind of demands the ASO is making. […] It makes a mockery of the protections afforded by the National Labor Relations Act and the entire scheme of federal labor law.’
Atlanta planned its lockout for eight months and was ready with all the PR and legal paraphanalia the moment midnight chimed.
The threat to Atlanta’s players is graver and more heartless than Minnesota. They have been lied to and belittled and locked out. Their families cannot get health protection. They have fewer opportunities for other employments than the well-known and well-connected musicians of Minnesota. They are under extreme pressure to cave in.
But if Atlanta’s musicians give way, other hardline boards will take heart. As in October 2012, the next orchestral lockout will be but a heartbeat away. If Atlanta’s musicians surrender, music across America will be the poorer for it.
The great soprano Magda Olivero died today at the immense age of 104.
She made her radio debut in 1932, retired to have a family in 1941, returned in 1952 and conquered all the world’s major stages. Her Met debut was in 1975, as Tosca. She retired at 71, a legend in her time, and made her last recording in her eighties.
No singer spanned more of her century. We thought she would last forever.
Fresh from their moral and media victory over the forces of darkness, musicians of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra are offering advice and practical help to their brothers and sisters in Atlanta, who are locked out in a less congenial climate.
Rob Knopper, an enterprising and energetic percussion player at the Met, offers some basic social media remedies in his post below.
Read, share and apply. Click here.
Sir James, 74, and Lady Jeanne Galway will toast their 30th anniversary tomorrow with a lovely pic and a new Sony album.
The Yale Collection of musical instruments has been given some more fine specimens. Jealous? Yeah, that’s life.
press release:
NEW HAVEN, CT | The Yale Collection of Musical Instruments has acquired the Andrew F. Petryn Collection of String Instruments and Bows, director William Purvis is pleased to announce. The collection of more than twenty objects was received in bequest following Mr. Petryn’s death in October 2013. Highlights include violins by Italian masters Nicolò Amati and Andrea Guarneri, and three bows by the pre-eminent French archetier François Tourte.
The Guarneri and Amati violins are magnificent examples of the work of two great representatives of the famed Cremonese school of string instrument making. They are in an especially fine state of preservation, and their provenances are well documented over the many generations that have ensued since they left the hands of their makers over four centuries ago.
In addition, the collection also comprises two violins of German make and twelve more bows by important archetiers, among them Jean Adam, Jacques LaFleur, François Nicolas Voirin, James Dodd, and Albert Nürnberger.
ABOUT ANDREW PETRYN
Andrew Petryn was born in New Haven on Christmas Day 1918. He received his primary and secondary education in the city’s public schools. Precocious as a child in both music and art, he made a career choice for the latter when he accepted a scholarship to the Yale School of Art, where he earned the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He went for further training at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and at Harvard’s Fogg Museum.
As a young man, he took a position at the Yale Art Gallery in conservation and rose to the position of Chief Conservator. Andy gained a wide reputation in the art world for his advocacy of conservation—as opposed to restoration—of art works that derived from his belief that restoration often was mistakenly undertaken with the illusory idea that a painting could be to its “original” appearance (i.e., the way it looked on the day it was completed). He believed that conservation, on the other hand, should attempt to demonstrate the unadulterated work of the artist, and as far as possible to most faithfully reveal and preserve the artist’s original intent. To attain that end, he became a pioneer in developing techniques grounded in physics, chemistry, and even electron microscopy.
Throughout his life, Andy cultivated his love of music. An exceptionally talented violinist, he frequently played chamber music with Yale School of Music faculty members, including Aldo Parisot and Broadus Erle, in informal soirées. His special knowledge and skills as an art conservator led him to develop a keen interest in the history and construction of the violin. He was a habitué of the ateliers of the leading violin maker/dealers in New York, often in the company of legendary figures in the violin world such as Heifetz, Milstein, Szigeti, and Francescatti at a time when their careers were at their apogees.
A friend of Richard Rephann, former director of YCMI, Andy was a charter member of the museum’s Board of Advisors. In recognition of his long service on the Board as well as his generous donation of time and talent in restoring one of the Collection’s prized oil paintings, he was named an Honorary Life Member of the Associates of the museum in 2004. Prior to the present bequest, he had donated two interesting French bowed string instruments: a quinton (or pardessus de viole) by Nicolas Augustin Chappuy (Paris, ca. 1770) and a pochette (dancing master’s fiddle) of anonymous make from the early 19th century. Both were given to the Collection in 2010.
Han-na Chang, who left her post today as music director of the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra with immediate effect, has issued the following statement:
Due to persistent administrative difficulties and irreconcilable artistic differences with the management of the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, I have given notice of my resignation as Music Director, effective today, 8 September.
Because of unexpected visa complications and on the advice of the Italian Embassy in London, to my regret I am legally unable to perform with the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra in Rome on Tuesday 9 September and I have withdrawn from all subsequent performances with the QPO.
It is a very sad day for me. Just over a year ago I was honoured to take up this position. At that time I made clear my belief that the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra could become an international ensemble of excellence and I have had the privilege of seeing that belief vindicated through the skill, hard work and commitment of this wonderful group of players, culminating in the orchestra’s debut at the Proms yesterday.
I send my deepest thanks to everyone involved for what we have achieved together and I wish the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra all the very best for its future.
Han-Na Chang
We hear that Han-na Chang, music director of the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, has resigned with immediate effect. The orchestra is in the middle of a European tour and had a considerable success at its BBC Proms debut last night.
The grounds for Chang’s resignation are not known*, although we hear trouble has been brewing with the orchestra’s German manager, Kurt Meister. There was also a recent clash with the concertmaster.
Meister assembled the orchestra from young, mostly European players. Its function is to highlight the cultural credentials of the gulf Emirate, and to obscure its dark role in employing slave labour and sponsoring terror organisations across the Middle East.
Han-na Chang was appointed a year ago amid much fanfare. Sunday’s concert was, said one observer, ‘not flawless but full of promise’.
She is the second music director in three days to resign with immediate effect. The first was (here).
*UPDATE: Here’s Han-na’s non-specific account of events.
The BBC has just discovered that Deborah Voigt, one of the leading Brünnhildes of our time, will be joining Rufus Wainwright in his Late Night Prom next week. Lucky for those who booked early. Details below.
The BBC Proms is delighted to announce that soprano Deborah Voigt will join Rufus Wainwright on stage as he makes his BBC Proms debut at his very own Late Night Prom on Thursday 11 September.
Voigt will perform two arias from Wainwright’s opera Prima Donna ‘Feux d’Artifice’ and ‘Quand j’étais jeune étudiante’ and will then join him in a duet of ‘If I Loved You’ from Carousel as the finale of the Prom.
Rufus Wainwright and Deborah Voigt will be accompanied by the Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Johannes Debus. Wainwright, a Grammy nominee, will perform a spectacular set, filling the Royal Albert Hall with his own brand of ‘Baroque pop’ that references everything from opera to ragtime, Lieder to jazz.
The Prom will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.
Rufus Wainwright will also perform at BBC Proms in the Park, Hyde Park on Saturday 13 September. For more details visit bbc.co.uk/promsinthepark
The national broadcaster of Denmark, DR, announced 161 million kronor in budget cuts this morning.
The main casualty is the DR chamber orchestra, an ensemble of high calibre which will cease to exist in January.
DR president Michael Christiansen promised to use the savings to strengthen the DR national symphony orchestra, which has just appointed Fabio Luisi as chief conductor.
1. Get thrown off a plane with your instrument.
2 Run a promotion on Slipped Disc.
Time for Three have done both. In May this year the string trio were ejected from a US Air flight after staff refused to board their instruments. They promptly made this runway video. It went viral.
Today, Time For Three launch their first Universal Music Classics album in Europe, featuring guest appearances from Alisa Weilerstein, Branford Marsalis, Joshua Radin and more.
The album is promoted on the front page of Slipped Disc.
We are very picky about commercial partnerships ad only accept those we can confidently recommend to 1.25 million
monthly readers worldwide.
We recommend Time for Three as the best thing to hit the string trio since Kronos changed the string quartet forever. They are young, virguosic and unafraid. You don’t need to like crossover to appreciate what they do to Norwegian Wood.
Click on the main page banner ad to see ad hear what the fuss is about.
Contact Matt Newton – matt@koo-boo.com – if you’d like to discuss future promotions.
A driver in the mountain town of Dalnegorsk, north of Vladivostock, crashed into a truck that was carrying a piano to the concert hall for the evening’s performance by Yuri Bogdanov.
The driver was killed. The piano was detained at the site during a lengthy police investigation.
Photo from lapizusa.com
UPDATE: It looks like we have been miseld. The picture is from an insurance advertisement.
Allstate Bad Luck Piano from Cristian Duran on Vimeo.
Sergei Chekanov of the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra was standing at a bus stop in the east of the city Moscow early last Monday morning when a passing thief snatched his violin case.
It contained a precious instrument, made by the luthier known as the Russian Stradivarius, Timofei Podgorny (1873-1958).
A distressed Chekanov, 50, reported the theft to police. The violin is valued at 700,000 rubles ($19,000).
Police say they arrested a man and recovered the violin within 24 hours. Sergei got his instrument back today.
Be careful on the buses in Moscow.
