Watch: Maestro is thrown out of hall for carrying his kid’s violin
mainFort Worth Symphony’s music director Miguel Hart-Bedoya reports that he was evicted by security from his own concert hall for carrying his daughter’s violin case. Miguel writes:
‘Tonight, after having conducted throughout the weekend and hosted eight guest orchestras ALL day long yesterday, I come to hear my daughter play with the Fort Worth Youth Orchestra, and I get kicked out by the police, inside the lobby of my concert hall, for holding my daughter’s violin case after her performance.
‘The police told me that YES you could come into Bass Performance Hall with a loaded gun, but NOT with a violin case!’
There is some back story here. Since the Fort Worth Symphony went on strike last year, relations between musicians and the Bass Performance Hall have iced over. A colleague writes: ‘Musicians aren’t allowed to take their cases into the hall. Any of them…even FWSO whose home this is supposedly is. On top of that, the FWSO musicians aren’t allowed to use their own locks on the lockers any more. They have to get one from BPH, which many won’t do because you can’t trust a super-expensive instrument not to be stolen when someone else gave you the lock. So now when many musicians would previously go into the lobby to talk to the audience post-show, they’re just leaving instead. Loss of good will. Loss of connection. Missed opportunity on creating more ticket-buyers and subscribers. But safety y’all…when really the only thing they’re checking bags for is food and drink. Utterly ridiculous.’
UPDATE: Fort Worth just got even worse.
Where has Fort Worth hospitality and respect for its performance gone? Where has respect, kindness, and appreciation for Fort Worth’s resident orchestra gone. We are speaking of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra with which I had the pleasure of performing together, as soloist, many years, ago at the Van Cliburn International Competition in 1969. What will happen during the upcoming Van Cliburn International Piano Competition? I always remember Fort Worth as a gracious, inviting, and hospitable town especially to visiting as well as resident musicians. This is so sad to know that it has changed its attitude and sense of generous hospitality, due to the negative political climate of today.
As a long-time symphony orchestra principal player and union president now retired, I find it absolutely horrifying that management-artist contentions could have produced vitriol to the level that jeopardizes the future of the Ft. Worth Symphony and its own relationship with the public. A venue security staff that detains its own symphony conductor is a clear example of a snake eating its own tail. Additionally, the fact that a concert-attendee is informed by a voice of authority that entrance to the venue with a loaded gun is permitted but with a violin case is NOT is absolutely stupefying and signifies a dawning of the Dark Ages. The arts define civilization, and civilization is what distinguishes Man from the Animal. If it is fact that the labor strife of the past has caused Bass Hall staff to place restrictions on placement of musical instruments inside the venue, then they must be checking their brains along with their coats at the entrance.
Erich Graf
former principal flutist, Utah Symphony
former President, Local 104, American Federation of Musicians, Local 104
Go Graf!!!! Well said. Hard to even come up with any words of response to this display of ridiculousness by management and others in charge. Reminds me of one of the reasons I was fired from being Princ of the New Haven Symphony, another organization that hires dreadfully incompetent folks: Management “forgot ” water for the the musicians during concert break and we were particularly dry as the heat in the hall was unusually revved up. I figured I would go out and purchase a bottle like the audience was able to do. Catch, unfortunately, was that your concert ticket was what “entitled” you to the water. Young person “selling” the water said she couldn’t take my dollar, only my ticket. Back and forth, apparently while management stood by and listened in. Of course I didn’t have a ticket. I turned around to walk away from the idiocy and grumbled that musicians couldn’t even get water. Oops, management heard that and placed that horrible infraction in a letter that two weeks later led to my being fired. Managements and orchestra executives are getting stupider and stupider….(only word that truly fits) – as if orchestras aren’t in enough financial trouble, much NOT due to musicians.
Trumpefying!!
Sorry, it is not “managements and orchestra executives (who) are getting stupider and stupider”, but rather the United States getting more and more stupid, more and more frightening and falling lower and lower. The stories that come out of that place, here and elsewhere, would be unbelievable if one didn’t know that this is normal there. I have seen and experienced similar absurdities when in the United States and actually come to expect the most ridiculous and stupid reactions from people there. Do Americans not realise that when reading stories like this one about Miguel Harth-Bedoya’s treatment in the very hall where he is Music Director, only makes any sane person laugh and pity those unfortunate to have to live, day to day, in such an environment, where these sorts of hard to believe reactions are part of their culture. As Trump would say, “Sad!”