Kicked into the long grass at San Francisco
NewsJanos Gereben’s Classical Voice has inside track on the deal that put SF Symphony players on $150k a year and left no-one settled or satisfied.
Negotiations on the next pay deal are just around the corner.
The players said: ‘Unsurprisingly, our negotiation of ten months has been grueling, ending with our Board and management refusing to restore our salaries. This short agreement is designed to allow the organization time for introspection and reflection. Decisions will need to be made by our Board as to whether the San Francisco Symphony will remain a top tier orchestra, or be redesigned to regional orchestra status.’
Janos says: ‘The financial situation is further complicated by the orchestra’s $429 million endowment, which is frequently cited by the musicians, along with newly revealed and still tentative plans to spend more than $100 million on restructuring Davies Symphony Hall without a demonstrated need for that major expense.’
175K may seem like a lot to most people, until one consider the outrageous cost of living in San Francisco. In many of these discussions one focuses merely on dollars, when one should look at the actual cost of living in a particular city. 175K in San Francisco or NYC does not afford anything extravagant, and could even be described as getting by, shocking as it may seem. The same amount in Cleveland or even Chicago could be considered twice the salary in terms of actual purchasing power and therefore allow one to live like a king, or at least very comfortably. Of course managements can always focus on sheer numbers, while conveniently ignoring the actual economic reality of any particular city (which they are well aware of) and therefore claim to be making a good offer. Dishonesty at this highest. This is an absolute raw deal for world-class musicians living in one of the most expensive cities in the entire world. It does not adequately reflect their standard of excellence. I wonder what the salary of management is, and whether it too remains oblivious of the economic reality of living in SF.
It’s the American system: culture by and for the wealthy. By European standards, the Bay Area would have several full time orchestras and at least 3 or 4 full time opera houses. Instead we get one orchestra and a half-time opera house, luxury institutions that are essentially cultural country clubs for the wealthy. And yet our antiquated late 18th century system of government offers no possibility of changing these situations. I support the musicians, but if you scratch the surface, the problems go vastly deeper than this orchestra’s pay.
Population of San Francisco: about 874,000. It has a full time symphony orchestra and one opera house.
In France, closest city by population is Marseille (840K). It only has one orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille which doubles as the opera orchestra.
In the UK, there is no city with approximately the same population. Birmingham has a population of about 1,200K and next city by population is Glasgow with about 612K. None of them have “several full time orchestras and at least 3 or 4 full time opera houses.” Glasgow does however have both the BBC Scottish Orchestra and the Royal Scottish national Orchestra.
Likewise in Germany: neither Köln (1,100K inhabitants), nor Frankfurt have what you describe. They both have their Radio Orchestra, and their opera house band, the Gürzenich-Orchester in Köln also giving concerts.
So no, by European standards a city with the population of San Fran will not have “several full time orchestras and at least 3 or 4 full time opera houses.”
In fact, the few cities in the world that do have 3 or more full time orchestras are, on top of my head: Berlin, Budapest, London, Munich, Prague, Tokyo, Vienna, and Warsaw (and perhaps one or two more that I am missing). All of them are capitals of their countries except for Munich which is the capital of the state of Bavaria. All of them are larger than San Fran. For opera houses, Berlin and Vienna are the only ones that I can think of that have 3 full time opera houses.
As for concert ticket prices, for the SFSO they start at $25, less than at major sport events.
Get your friggin’ facts right.
I’ve read a lot of dumb arguments on this blog, but this one is one of the dumbest.
The whole Bay Area is a better comparison for the total SFS audience and is almost 8 million.
No it is not. I live in the Bay Area and with no usable public transit it is not remotely like European or UK cities or even like NYC, which all have usable mass transit from anywhere to anywhere. It is an ordeal to get to the Symphony or Opera, and that ordeal is only possible for people who have a lot of free time as well as money for these cultural events. The whole SMSA is only relevant if one can actually get to these cultural events.
I agree about Public Transit. I’m used to Amsterdam, so the Bay Area is hard on me. It takes me an hour and 45 minutes to get to the theaters. I saw Don Giovanni for just $35. No complaints there. Bart is a big turn-off, but my only possibility. The bridge tolls are also a big problem.
Stepping over the homeless and dying, and dodging all the human feces, isn’t fun either.
Add Amsterdam to the cities with 3 orchestra’s
The OP referred to the Bay Area, not just SF. “Home to approximately 7.76 million people, Northern California’s nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns [and] airports” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area
There is nowhere I can think of that’s a direct comparison to the Bay Area in Europe, but the OP’s facts are no worse than yours.
Why do you think it is, that Europe has no city remotely as prosperous as San Francisco?
When did I say that? I mentioned several cities in Europe that support a number of orchestras and opera companies. You need to be prosperous in order to be able to do that.
Show me a “regional” orchestra that Pays that much.
Show me someone who knows proper rules of capitalization.
Davies Hall is owned by the city of San Francisco. Is the SF Symphony actually wanting to pay $100 million or is it the city or a combination?
The endowment might typically yield 4% annually, without touching the capital: slightly more than $17 million. If the orchestra has, say, 90 full-time musicians with a base pay of $150k, that base salary amounts to $13.5 million. The rest of the orchestra’s annual budget would (have to) be covered by donations. I don’t know those figures and I might be naive, but it seems like there ought to be room for some increase in base salary, based on the endowment’s expected yield.
Endowment yield isn’t all available to spend, especially not when inflation is high, as it is.
And if like most of CA they have to prioritize the environment and “social justice” over maximum return on the dollar they might not even get 4%
Why can’t the musicians union get it beaten through their collective thick empty heads that the endowment isn’t for everyday expenses, but for the inevitable deficits at the end of the fiscal year.
William, the public is free to vote for SF politicians who are willing to promise a new Symphony and full-time opera house in the Bay area at the taxpayers’ expense of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. If there’s support, it’ll happen. Perhaps see if you can do something about it. Move to SF and start organizing the grassroots? Writing about it on here is unlikely to do much, though I doubt it’ll stop you.
Just caught up with this. The public isn’t free to vote for comprehensive public arts funding like all other developed countries have. There is no party with such a program on its platform. We are thus not given a choice.
The actual annual figure is $172k now, $180k next season, “in addition to a retroactive lump sum payment to full-time musicians.”
Let’s not ignore that the base level salary is $150k/$180k. A quick review of their 990 tax return shows you that the principal players earn $300 k to $500 k. These musicians have absolutely no business complaining about these very high salaries.
$150k is a middle class salary in expensive San Francisco where the average home cost is $1.2 million.