The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association (CSOA) announces that all CSOA-presented concerts scheduled to take place at Symphony Center from Thursday, March 14 to Saturday, March 16 are canceled due to the current strike by musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

It’s gone to hard hats.

 

The first photographer on the Chicago Symphony picket today was Eddie Arruza of Chicago Tonight.

He has sent us these exclusive images:

We think that’s violinist Sando Shia in blue.

(c) Eddie Arruza

 

Larry Johnson (c) has first pic of the maestro with the strikers in Chicago.

Read on here.

They gave him a brass fanfare.

 

Lord Menuhin died today, on March 12, 1999.

He used to ring from time to time, asking if I could spare him a few minutes to discuss something I had written in a newspaper. Unfailingly polite, always kind, deeply concerned about the future of humanity.

I miss Yehudi.

 

A message from the maestro:

 

I had a scheduled 10am rehearsal today. Due to the strike, this rehearsal has been cancelled.

However, I am  going to meet my musicians and colleagues anyway. I am not participating in the picket line, but I wish to listen to what the musicians have to say.

I intend my position not to be neutral, but I am trying to help the two parties reconcile for the benefit of the great Chicago Symphony, for the entire community in Chicago and the world.

Die Welt has a chilling interview with a bass-baritone who argues that the European company system is breaking down because young singers are too poorly paid.

There are the technicians who earn comparatively well, the orchestra musicians who also earn relatively well, and the chorus singers who earn more at many theatres than young soloists… Soloists are the easiest group to save on staff costs.

This anonymous soloist has given up the profession. He now works as a management consultant.

Read here.

 

From the Chicago Federation of Musicians:

Maestro Muti will join the musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, including a brass section that will perform, and others in solidarity at the Picket Line for a press conference — Tuesday, 10am at Symphony Center, Outside, at 220 South Michigan Avenue.

It is, we think, unprecedented for a US music director to go on strike with the musicians.

UPDATE: We understand that Mstislav Rostropovich went on the picket line with the National Symphony Orchestra in 1993 after some musicians were accused of violating the police perimeter.  He stayed for half an hour and the strike continued for six weeks.

UPDATE2: Muti clarifies

The violist Vicki Powell, 30, has passed her probation as principal viola of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic.

‘Ecstatic!’ she exclaims.

The pay’s so-so, but the sailing’s terrific.

 

The composer and pianist Yotam Haber has been talking to Anne Midgette about the accident that cost him a finger, now surgically retached:

Yotam Haber is an established composer and pianist, an assistant professor at the University of New Orleans, a former artistic director of New York’s MATA festival and winner of a Guggenheim fellowship and a Koussevitzky Foundation commission, among many other honors and awards. Since childhood, though, he has had another dream: to race sled dogs in Alaska.

…
But the dream ended three days later when, dragged behind a tipped dogsled, Haber watched his right index finger snap off “like a twig,” followed by a geyser of blood.

Read on here.

 

 

Latest from the Yuja Wang/Iggudesman travel diary.

In a typically offbeat move, the violinist has named two ‘permanent guest artists in residence’ for his Kremerata Baltica.

Both are pianists. The Frenchman Lucas Debargue is well established, the Latvian Georgijs Osokins less so. Debargue said: ‘Music cannot be separated from relationships. We started this adventure with
the Weinberg quintet and then something happened. I kept my feelings preciously guarded, but later
Gidon Kremer confirmed them by inviting me to participate more and more. I fell in love with all
the ideas, craziness and unexpected reactions of the musicians. Kremerata Baltica is now a part of
my life and I want to contribute to its history.’


‘It’s the future of Kremerata Baltica,’ said Kremer.

 

You know it’s serious when the mathematical futurists get involved.

Chicago Symphony president Jeff Alexander told media last night that both sides in the day-old strike had asked their actuaries – who specialise in pension projections – to get back together this week in order to review details related to the proposed retirement benefit.

Voices might get raised in a strike, but no-one hits the actuaries.

Local sources say that pensions are the main sticking point to a settlement.

photo: H. Edgar/CCR