Met musicians find new home on the Far West Side
mainThe last of the MET Orchestra Musicians Spotlight Series, on June 13 at 3pm ET, will be recorded live before an invited audience at Peak NYC on the 101st Floor of 30 Hudson Yards.
Guest performer Tamara Mumford joins MET Orchestra musicians in chamber music and arias, including several world premiere arrangements.
While this concert closes the MET Orchestra’s offerings this year, it opens to a new chapter for the organization on Manhattan’s Far West Side. In addition to this performance opportunity at Hudson Yards, the MET Orchestra will also take up residence at High Line Nine’s gallery 9.1. The space, which is open to the public, will serve as a rehearsal and education quarters for MET Orchestra members.
What a great feat for this orchestra who has been so mistreated by its own management.
This perfectly illustrates how big orchestra players — by leveraging their affiliation, their oranizational muscle, their own prime performing real estate — in branching out into chamber music, are sucking up all the oxygen of the entire classical music ecosystem for all other smaller, independent, free lance, recent graduate musicians.
Chamber music groups have closed, free lancers have lost playing opportunities, graduates face hopelessly closed market.
The pie is getting smaller, and big city orchestra players are getting bigger of it, that they never ventured into before, even as they enjoy full time work, full tenure, 6 figure salaries, full health care, pension, union protection, from their own full time employers, their orchestras.
It’s a classic monopoly, where a single big market player shuts out all the competition.
The Met, the CSO, the NY Phil, to name a few, are the musical Amazons and Googles and Microsofts of their cities.
Is this a serious post? Have you missed the 1000 other posts about the Met Musicians not being paid since March 2020, being abandoned by their management and music director and still not receiving a salary? Congratulations to my MET colleagues on this fantastic initiative! Best wishes and we are behind you!
Stop drinking the Kool-Aid for one second and think for yourself.
For every Met musician there are 1,000 musicians in NY in far worse situations, in terms of career, in terms of finances, in terms of security.
Reread the post from the perspective of these 100,000 unemployed musicians.
Yes, there are many out of work musicians right now and that is a shame, and as it happens, this is an article about some of them, doing what they can to pay their bills. They INVENTED this chamber music series during the pandemic so i fail to see how they are taking work away from anyone else. Maybe if they, and probably you had practiced more, you would have gotten out of the first round. Clown.
Kool-Aid…? MET musicians are (were) at the MET because they worked their asses off for many years to win highly competitive auctions as to enter the orchestra. What the hell does that have to do with, in your words, Google and Amazon? They have been mistreated by management and all you can do is rant about the “inequity” that some made it to the MET while others did not. Disgusting.
On what planet do you live…?
Good news, and a grand and inspiring photo!
Performing in a high-end restaurant on the 101 floor doesn’t quite send the right message when you’re engaged in a labor dispute over wages.
They really couldn’t find a venue that doesn’t ring out exclusivity and elitism at fff?
My guess is they are working in a venue that can afford to pay them. They’re the hired help for that day, or for whatever period of time they are being employed, same as the waitstaff and the cooks. I guarantee the waitstaff and cooks don’t “ring out exclusivity and elitism” just because they happen to work on the 101st floor. At the end of their shifts, they just go home, thankful to have a job in these strange times, same as the musicians.
i know this is not a big deal but the capitalization of MET drives me nuts as a grammar student. there is no reason. call it the Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera.
Why should it drive you nuts? MET is a logo and, considering the quality of artists who work there, it is deservedly capitalised. Chill out. There are more important issues about which to become upset…