Why pay an oboe $70,000 more than a principal flute?

We’ve been hearing more about the equal pay dispute in which the Boston Symphony is accused of paying principal flute Elizabeth Rowe a much lower salary than principal oboe, John Ferillo. She claims it’s down to sex discrimination.

BSO will claim it’s a matter of seniority. Ferillo has been in the job three years longer. Would that justify so large a pay gap?

He’s more experienced, and at higher institutions, they say. Rowe was assistant principal in Baltimore, before winning #1 flute in Washington DC, and auditioning for Boston a year later.

John Ferillo was co-principal at the Met and a professor at Juilliard before he joined Boston in 2001. He’s a student of John de Lancie at Curtis, blue-blood credentials in American music.

Still, 70k is an awful lot of credentials. How Boston allowed this internal disparity to simmer untreated for a dozen years suggests a certain degree of institutional complacency.