Who won Cleveland its best pay deal? Five women

Who won Cleveland its best pay deal? Five women

Orchestras

norman lebrecht

November 03, 2023

Local media have noticed that the committee which won musicians in the Cleveland Orchestra one of the best pay deals in the country was made up entirely of women. Slippedisc reported that the negotiations had been unusually courteous and discreet.

Now we know why.

Violinist and committee chair Kathy Collins, a 29-year veteran of the orchestra, told Axios that there had previously never been more than one woman on the committee, which is elected every year and typically tasked with contractual negotiations every three.

On a point of proportion, men still outnumber women 2-1 in the Cleveland Orchestra.

pictured L-R: Elayna Duitman, Eliesha Nelson, Kathy Collins, Isabel Trautwein, Emma Shook.

Comments

  • Chicagorat says:

    I agree wholeheartedly and congratulations to this incredible orchestra and competent all-female committee.

    The fact that audiences flock to hear the music of this fantastic orchestra certainly helps. This is not the case everywhere. Take a random example: Chicago. Tickets sold by the CSO in 2021/2022 were 210,227, a ~40% drop against the 347,502 tickets sold in the 2017/2018 season. Remember that the CSO went on strike in 2019, so really the 2017/2018 represents their true pre-Covid level. You will be shocked when you see the 2023 numbers. The 2023/24 ticket sales are scary. The 2019 strike, along with the disastrous leadership of Muti, alienated a good portion of the audience, who in the strike and in the iconic Muti picket line picture did not see an honest labor fight but only elitist entitlement.

    It matters who sits at the negotiation table. What about the CSO union negotiators? The 2019 one, Steve Lester, was the “genius” who helped secure the benefits of the old dinosaurs, negotiating the permanent blow up of the legacy pension plan for new and future members. The current spokesman, J Smelser, has been the key Muti ally in getting the exceptional David Cooper out of the orchestra, another kick in the face of paying audiences who adored this once in a generation horn player.

    The marketing department does not help the cause, either, by posting scary clips like this one (and in case you are wondering, no it is not a Halloween Butchering-Beethoven party):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZWvG_OJ6pI

    To add insult to injury, after big troubles in the horn and violas section, we are now expecting shocking news from the cellos.

    So when we see orchestras outclassing others in pay rises, we have to dig deeper and see the root causes.

    • eyes crossed. says:

      A “random” example. Hahahaha…

    • Paracelsus says:

      On Oct. 24 2023, the Teatro Massimo in Palermo was forced to cancel the first evening of Don Giovanni conducted by Muti and directed by his daughter, Chiara. The reason? Opera workers were on strike in Italy.

      Muti was livid. Call it Muti-Karma.

      The fact that he is reduced to conducting operas in provincial Italian theaters, teaming up with his daughter, tells the story of the fall of this ridiculous egomaniac. The clip is both terrible and mesmerizing by the way. Most overrated conductor in history.

    • Pacer1 says:

      Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

    • Gloria Blucher says:

      Dear Rodent,
      What planet are you on? Did you hear the CSO‘s spectacular performance of Mahler 1 last week with Szeps-Znaider? We’re you in attendance last night to hear the beautiful performances of the Manfred Overture, Schicksalslied and The Planets with Harding – to a packed out house? Perhaps you were there, on the stage…? No matter the answers, for goodness’ sake, get a life!

      • Greg T says:

        Whoever he/she is, the rodent clearly has connection to,or worse is employed, by the CSOA or could even be a musician as you suggested. My suspicion is also that it is the same person as CSOA Insider. Obviously they have one single purpose in their life and that’s to maliciously taint both the CSO and it’s management. It’s someone who has access to information that should be considered internal or even classified and is airing out things at the ready. CSO management should consider investigating this. It is sickening.

        • Chicagorat says:

          I have a policy of not responding to other readers’ posts, except when someone tries to intimidate me. I am not going to be intimidated by you or anyone else. I can only be censored by this website, and I have not been censored because there is nothing to censor. You seem slightly more informed than the average reader since you have at least some understanding that what I have been writing is accurate, and you don’t like that.

          The CSO is a non for profit corporation. As such, they are accountable to the public and the taxpayers. In a hypothetical scenario where an anonymous source reports a non for profit corporation’s unethical actions, the reports fulfill a public service. If folks wanted to hide unethical actions instead (hypothetically speaking), we should ask why.

          I will not stop my posts. Deal with it.

          • Violinist says:

            So in other words you are a keyboard warrior on a righteous quest to rid the world of CSO? As Gloria said, go get a life you sad clown

          • steve says:

            why bother posting here when you could release all the info you supposedly have to the press? if you really wanted to blow everything open, wouldn’t it make more sense to expose via the press?

        • Midwestern Violin says:

          Wrong. It is M that should have been investigated by HR and the management. At least one direct report into the head of the org, as I understand it, is well aware. I agree that the standards are higher for a non for profit and some things are well below any standard. They did not get tainted, they are tainted.

    • Jon H says:

      The ticket sales probably has little to do with Muti’s leadership because your average audience member, or the one you’re trying to get, has never heard of Muti, or assumes anyone on that podium must be OK. They just want a great performance of a composer they might’ve heard of. It’s a small group of enthusiasts and groupies that are comparing Muti with Haitink and Barenboim.

    • WillymH says:

      Aren’t we lucky you had these “random” figures to hand.

  • Dragonfly says:

    Isabel rocks!

  • John Chunch says:

    It takes some feminine wiles to get stuff done nowadays. Kudos, m’lady.

  • Guest Conductor says:

    Way to go Ladies!!

  • Eric says:

    You mean the professional ladies in Cleveland (unlike the immature tone-deaf narcissists at “YOUR San Francisco Symphony!”) got a great contract signed without bashing management, without endless public whining that they’d “taken music lessons since kindergarten” (!), without trotting out laughably emotional kvetches about the “great sacrifices” they’d made for their careers, and without making the insultingly transparent claim that they “only want a better contract because of their deep (deep!) concern for the well-being of the organization’s future musicians”???

    Huh.

  • Robert Holmén says:

    And they are all section players, too.

    I’d be curious to know the internal circumstances that caused them to be the ones.

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