Exclusive: Trouble at LA Phil and San Fran Symphony
NewsPlayers in the New York Philharmonic received a letter not long ago thanking them for their sacrifices during Covid and restoring their pay to 100%, including all back wages.
This news went down on the West Coast like a punctured Zeppelin.
Both main orchestras are in wage talks, and with singularly unsympathetic managements.
Musicians in both LA Phil and SFS are still receiving 85% pay right now. LA Phil musicians received their first contract offer yesterday, a 5-year deal: 0% increase first year, then +1%, 1%, 2%, 2%, With inflation running at nine percent, the offer was shot down – the first time since the 1960’s that the musicians refused to ratify a pay deal.
San Francisco Symphony has asked for pay cuts in the new contract. An interim management has also sacked seven popular staff members. Both orchestras could be heading for the mattresses.
I don’t know the inner-workings of the NY Phil, but from a public relations perspective, Deborah Borda continues to ride a wave of positive press, from the treatment of musicians and staff to the no-nonsense completion of Geffen Hall’s renovation.
I wish the Philharmonic continued success.
Yes, for all the “anti-NY” (and even “anti-NYPO”) stuff one reads on SD, this shows somebody in management (D.Borda et al) knows what they’re doing. Not easy at all. Well done.
Pitiful and old thinking from management. Donors want the orchestra to succeed while management puts up all road blocks. Stick it to the man!
Yes, they will be difficult negotiations. Even more alarming, Covid has not really gone away. I’m sure that’s not news to anyone. There’s a more virulent strain in India now that could be very difficult to contain. Nobody is out of the woods at this point.
It should be noted that the Chicago Symphony restored full pay to its musicians back in January.
Not only are the members of the CSO extraordinary musicians, but throughout the pandemic they formed chamber orchestra groups and performed wonderful concerts on Chicago’s Orchestra Hall stage that were widely watched on video. They kept their audiences applauding from home. And those audiences are now back in the theater.
“those audiences are now back in the theater”.
Good journalists should report attendance figures instead of making misleading statements. Please do your job and report the facts.
No, they aren’t. Hence this issue. Can’t pay if you’re losing even more money than usual.
You can pay, it’s call “endowment burning”, and it’s Jeff Alexander’s favorite sport, made even easier by the longest bull market in history.
But the party is now over, and the man who has been so good at organizing Muti’s personal entertainment does not know what to do. He has no creative ideas, no vision, no ambitions. He will be remember as the “Muti enabler”.
Too bad their last negotiations were such a disaster during the work stoppage. Epic fail.
Very troubling
Dear LA Phil and San Fran Symphony musicians,
Muti is available to stand on the picket lines with you. Call Jeff Alexander for instructions on how to leverage Muti on the picket lines for negotiating leverage. Your Music Directors are serious professionals, they will never do such a thing for you.
As they used to say in the Fleischmann years, “Chicago is noted for its brass, Cleveland for its strings, and LA for its management.”
I attended six San Francisco Symphony Concerts this season and attendance was really low at every performance.
Davies Symphony Hall is probably too large but it was common for the two of us to have 20-30 empty seats around us.
It could also be the transition from the celebrity and huge personality of Michael Tilson Thomas to Esa Peka Salonen but I don’t know.
I think Salonen is rather incredible.
Heartbreaking to read this. I loved attending concerts in 91-93 while I was stationed at Travis AFB and recall packed houses and enthusiastic receptions.
I started attending the San Francisco Symphony in the early 2000s and can remember so many capacity or near capacity concerts.
I did notice, in the 2018 and 2019 seasons, a decline in attendance.
I attended a concert, with Salonen, a few weeks back which climaxed with Pines of Rome – Davies was half full. I assume many orchestras performing Pines of Rome would be at capacity.
SF is in total denial at the state of things. My company’s office is near the 4th street Caltrain station. They used to need traffic cops to handle the people pouring out of there each morning. Now it is an absolute ghost town. 20% of 25-29 year olds left the city in the last two years alone, an astonishing number. And heck, I myself have moved with my family to the great Mountain West. Not one indicator has cut back in SF’s favor that I have seen. But, the locals that have not had their catalytic converter stolen seem as in denial as ever.
If you think so highly of Esa-Pekka Salonen, you should at least spell his name correctly. Imho, going from MTT to EPS is akin to upgrading from a gifted but excessively verbose amateur to an intellectually superior and encyclopedic ally knowledgeable professional.
That is, encyclopedically – in one word, of course.
The musicians are just going to have to expect less money. There’s no place for them to go. Either they play in the orchestra or they work in McDonalds.
Life on the left coast is a bitch.
God’s chosen time zone now in deep decline.
Philadelphia restored its pay cuts last September. Hope attendance picks up in the fall.
Damage was done in Philly long before. Another disastrous negotiation.
I am sure these musicians all got lucrative side gigs outside of their top orchestra jobs. They should just be thankful and play on.
This is the same kind of attitude that says you should be able to get my music for free on Spotify because my primary job pays me enough. No side gig is ever “lucrative.” Musicians everywhere are being asked to be happy working 7/365 while living paycheck to paycheck. It’s a rare bird who has an extra side business that will carry them. Cost of living AND professional skills should determine wages. Period.
I agree with your premise, however for any musician in a top orchestra like the LA Phil or SFS, they absolutely command minimum $150/hr for a lesson, probably more like ($200/hr in that market) and trust me, if you reach out to any elite musician to inquire about private lessons for your talented student or as a serious/accomplished amateur they all have full studios and are highly in demand. Any one of them could easily generate minimum $100k in teaching revenue if they desired, teaching 15 hours/week.
BTW I know at least one guy in LA Phil who has a successful side hustle playing at weddings. He can charge extra ($500/hr) because of LA Phil on his resume. So these guys aren’t living from paycheck to paycheck on one job only.
Any evidence for your claim?Or just a spontaneous brain ejaculation?
Your ignorance is showing so let me enlighten you. Many LA Phil (and Pacific Symphony, Pasadena Symphony & Pops) musicians do lucrative side gigs teaching private lessons or on faculty of the Colburn School of Music next to Walt Disney Concert Hall, as well as movie recording studio jobs…. all thanks to their prestigious orchestra job on their resume. So they should try to keep their day job ($100k base pay @LA Phil) and not complain too much especially in these challenging times.
People did not get “side gigs” during the pandemic for the most part. There were no gigs. And the high rents and mortgages still need to be payed. We musicians did our part and gave back a lot and now we in SF have a contract negotiation coming up. Hoping that our management and Board does the right thing but bracing for trouble.
Asking for a pay cut in the Bay Area is like asking someone to slice off flesh from an arm, but they get to choose which arm.
When Silicon Valley started offering its tech workers to work remotely, there was a mass exodus to states like Texas and Georgia and Colorado.
Cost of living remains sky high despite the mass emigration. As it is SF Symphony players earn barely enough to live in SF itself.
Maybe that’s what management wants, SF musicians to work remotely and participate via Zoom.
Hell, audience members already attend concerts via Zoom, essentially, with all the streaming options.
It depends partly on expectations. Starting weekly minimum pay for the S.F. Symphony is a bit north of $3,500 (that’s weekly). That’s for entry level section players. I lived in S.F. for over 30 years on not a whole lot more than that for an entire month. If you’re wanting a house, children, life insurance, vacations, etc., then yes, even that pay could be challenging. And while there aren’t a lot of high paying ‘casual’ gigs at this time (weddings, church gigs, funeral services, etc.), there are still more than a few eager students out there to be had. I know plenty of players in the Bay Area – good ones – who play the ‘freeway philharmonic’ circuit and hustle up whatever paying gigs they can. They have no place to go ask for a pay raise. In short, they make do.
I hear Gelb is going to restore salaries to all Met employees that have been in pretty much wage freeze for a decade while inflation soars and donations hit the sky.
Just kidding. He is probably going to buy himself a gold toilet rather than pay his employees a decent salary
These American orchestras pay salaries us London musicians can only dream about! Yet they still complain.
Fortunately for you “London musicians”, you live in a modern country that has single-payer health coverage for all. Not so in the US. Those giant American salaries have to account for that.
Your information on LA is incorrect. You should probably verify something like that before putting it out there, but accuracy has never been a hallmark of this blog. As long as the comments are interesting, eh?
It’s been obvious for years that this blog is an uncritical conduit for Borda’s self-serving propaganda. Now that she is no longer in LA, the narrative will be that everything is a disaster there, just as everything was a disaster before she arrived. Borda is an excellent orchestra manager, but her myth is inflated.
What exactly is “incorrect”? Other than the word “yesterday” – it was actually more than six weeks ago – the LA Phil information in the post, though far from full, is quite accurate.
Well, I’ve tried to explain it twice now, but the moderators have chosen to ignore my reply, just like they will do with this one.
See, you are wrong again – your reply is here for everyone to see, so maybe your “explanations” deserved to be ignored.
They could fix this all tomorrow if they’d just start offering programs of all latinx and bipoc composers with an emphasis on Florence Price. There. You’re welcome, LAPhil/SF
Yep! Just look at how well that’s playing out in Philly with Yannick!
LA Phil has been offering programs featuring living Latin and African-American composers.
And the term Latinx is offensive to many Hispanics.
https://www.newsweek.com/just-2-percent-hispanics-use-term-latinx-40-percent-find-it-offensive-poll-1656412
This music is offensive to ALL, not only Latinos or Whites, or Asians. It is offensive because IT IS RACIST BY DEFINITION!!
Music itself cannot “by definition” be racist, but choosing which pieces to perform based on composers’ race can be and often is.
I’ve worked with orchestras all over the country this year, and no orchestra is able to fill their performances. Covid is still keeping a big segment of the orchestra audience at home.
Yikes, a sign of what’s to come for other groups.
Before you all feel sorry for the LA Phil musicians, I can assure you that they make good money from teaching, both privately and at the university level.
I’m a member of the orchestra. I have 3 kids and a long commute. I don’t have time to teach privately and don’t have one of the university jobs. To afford a house out here to fit 3 kids in a halfway decent school district costs a least a couple million.
You all are missing the point that no well-trained, unionized professionals should ever, EVER have to endure a pay cut, especially when cost of living keeps going up. In addition, it seems none of you understand that only 20-40% of the average orchestra’s budget comes from ticket sales.
Also, why don’t you leave your highly skilled profession after 30 years to go work at McDonalds. Any takers? No? Weird.
Deborah Borda is one of the most effective fundraising chief executive officers of any arts organization in the country. I assume she either got some high end donors (individuals and/or corporations) to pony up for the full time salaries, or she went into the orchestra’s reserves or, God forbid, its endowment.
As I stated earlier, the LA Phil would have a contract before the expiration of their previous one, and it’s pretty good. They remain the highest paid symphony orchestra in the US for at least the next year or two, and made significant improvements to scheduling and working conditions. This thread was a lot of noise for nothing.