UPDATE: John Eliot Gardiner exits his orchestras
OrchestrasThe board of the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras today terminated its relationship with the conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who has been suspended since a violent incident 11 months ago. The termination is abrupt.
A statement reads: Sir John Eliot Gardiner, founder of the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, will not be returning to the organisation.
Gardiner issued a statement some minutes later, saying he was stepping down with immediate effect, seemingly of his own volition.
The orchestra statement continues:
Following a reported assault in August 2023, John Eliot Gardiner stepped back from public music-making. He accepted full responsibility for the incident, and he has not worked with the organisation for nearly a year. During this time, the MCO did consider the possibility of a rehabilitation process – operating within the MCO’s Respect & Dignity at Work policy – while its primary concern throughout has been to fully uphold values of inclusion, equality and respect for all its stakeholders. As a leading Arts organisation, the MCO takes seriously its obligations to protect victims of abuse and assault, and preventing any recurrence remains a priority for the organisation.
Gardiner, 81, has been undergoing treatment for anger management while trying to rehabilitate his status with the organisations he founded. As charities, however, those institutions had public obligations and procedures which made a rapid return impossible. Negotiations were under way to arrange a dignified departure and further meetings were still scheduled this week but the atmosphere soured and we understand the board lost patience with the turbulent and entrepreneurial conductor.
In today’s statement, the board added:
John Eliot Gardiner’s extraordinary musical influence over the past sixty years has made a lasting impact. The MCO acknowledges with gratitude his monumental contribution, and holds a deep-seated commitment to honour and preserve these phenomenal accomplishments. The organisation is proud to have enabled and promoted his long and illustrious career, alongside that of many other musicians. They will work passionately to build upon the remarkable foundations laid by the three ensembles he founded, taking forward their trailblazing work with new talent and new benchmark performances for years to come.
So far this year the MCO has continued to bring extraordinary music making to audiences around the world. Projects with conductors Dinis Sousa, Jonathan Sells and Peter Whelan, including the Beethoven symphony cycle in London and Paris, Bach motets in Leipzig, and, most recently, Handel’s Israel in Egypt at the Salzburg Festival, have attracted widespread critical acclaim. At the end of the summer and in coordination with our venue partners, the MCO will announce new conductors that will be joining the MCO to lead a new season of projects, which will feature new creative milestones and firsts for the choir and orchestras.
UPDATE: JEG’s exit statement.
2nd UPDATE: So what next for JEG?
Good riddance! With JEG’s remarkable talent comes responsibility. The incident was an utter disgrace and was apparently a predictable extension of previous bad conduct.
He’s not as bad as his dad who, although he wore a blackshirt, never conducted himself at all well.
Reading the entire statement and keep thinking there’s a missing sentence or clause. It says they considered a rehabilitation process, then skips to MCO taking seriously its obligations. The “however” part is missing. What happened that thwarted their consideration of a rehabilitation process
Note, I’m not proposing they should have or they shouldn’t have. It’s just that the statement is lacking that bridge between what they considered and what they decided and a communique of this kind shouldn’t make you have to read between the lines while pretending to be clear. Did he fail to work towards a potential rehabilitation to their satisfaction? Did they conclude that rehabilitation was not possible or untenable (two different things)?
Philharmonia still holding on
Well, a bubbly, friendly personality will get you only so far.
“…inclusion, equality and respect…”
So go on, sack all old white men worldwide!
Neither gender nor race nor age
absolve old white men from bad behavior. Fairly simple concept.
Hubris eventually is their undoing.
Neither gender nor race nor age
absolve anyone from bad behaviour.
Not just old white men.
Only the ones who behave reprehensively.
What are you on? The old piece of sh*t punched a soloist in the face. He deserved this.
Good riddance to the lot of them if they’re all like JEG
What a ridiculous comment.
“So go on, sack all old white men worldwide!”
Oh, please! How many white men were ever as talented as George Floyd or Kamala Harris? Besides, room needs to be made for the millions of untalented Kanneh-Masons of this world.
I was part of this sordid band of slaves, curious visitors and sycophants that literally gravitated around JEG at one time.
MCO is by any stretch of the imagination nothing more than its association with JEG. They cannot go on for very long the way things presently operate. That is, unless they can attract an equally compelling figurehead. I doubt it.
It’s actually sad that John Eliot had to go this way. I guess the years of what passed as “normal behaviour” for him became outdated in the Era of Woke-DEI.
Good luck to all.
I had never thought of not going around slapping people as “woke” – so I guess I was “woke” long before it was popular.
Believe it or not – “era of Woke” or not – punching a co-worker in the face is not “normal behaviour”.
Very sad news indeed.The concerts with the MCO orchestras and chorus were always extraordinary. JEG’s leadership, vision and scholarship were unique and unequaled. In addition his concerts with the LSO and Philharmonic always brought new insights into often familiar music.
The MCO board is being short sighted, naive and probably self destructive. Sir John Eliot Gardiner is not replaceable.
The graveyards are filled with “irreplaceable” people.
The original quote is from Georges Clemenceau: “Les cimetières sont pleins de gens irremplaçables, qui ont tous été remplacés” (The cemeteries are full of irreplaceable people, all of whom were replaced). Le Tigre, as was often the case, was quite correct.
Agree wholeheartedly!
He is definitely replaceable.
Better period-instrument ensembles than the MCO -the English Concert, the AAM, Concentus Musicus Wien to name just three – have thrived after the departure of their founder. JEG’s insistence on clinging on, and his lack of succession planning, is another instance of his irresponsibility and selfishness.
C’mon; NBC fired Toscanini
No they didn’t.
If abuse of musicians “became outdated in the Era of Woke-DEI,” then, notwithstanding the automatic denunciations which greet woke-DEI almost every time those terms are mentioned in the comments section of this website, more respectful treatment of musicians is one of the good things to have come from “the era of woke-DEI.”
So thumping someone is anti woke? Just normal behavior?
You win the award for the most pointless use of “woke” for 2024.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/70402735@N06/53055143506
Come on – it’s absolutely not “woke” to object to, or discipline, someone who physically assaults a colleague. It’s basic workplace behaviour not to do that, whether you work in an office, a store or an orchestra, and there have been laws around which protect employees against this since years before “woke” was a thing (or not a thing!), and rightly so. No-one should be allowed to get away with this, ever, no matter who they are.
To bring “Woke-DEI” (right-wing buzzwords for any societal change one doesn’t like) into this situation is such a stupid choice to make I’m astonished!
I learned today that hitting people in the face was considered “normal behavior” back in the day. That bosses or superiors do not punch their coworkers, because it’s just physical assaulting, is now woke. Got it.
That’s right Doug, decency is woke. Carry on and stay classy.
Thrilled to have something new to add to my list of things that are “woke”: being fired for punching someone at work.
How the mighty have fallen! I’ve never been a fan of Jeggy, having few of his recordings of his in my vast vinyl/CD/DVD Library – the best of which is his DVD presentation of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers from St. Mark’s, Venice in which you get to share a boat ride on the Lagoon with him. However, as the MCO was his creation, maybe they should do the decent thing and disband themselves; ridding us of just another ghastly period instrument orchestra made up of freelancers and Early music-style-bound singers.
Considering he founded these orchestras and brought them to fame it is sad to see them turn against him so decisively. I suppose he would have had to retire eventually but the manner of his leaving leaves a lot to be desired.
So, apparently, does his behaviour.
The guy got what he deserved. It sounds like punching the singer was just the tip of the iceberg. There are enough fine musicians out there who know how to behave like civilized human beings that we don’t need his type around. Good riddance.
He threw a very heavy score into a trumpeter face whilst at the LSO, then a great cover up. Believe the management made the trumpeter apologise to JEG! This is how messed up it was.
That incident was covered at Slipped Disc and elsewhere. Gardiner apologized privately and publicly to the trumpeter.
A great pity that one incident has, essentially, wiped out six decades of remarkable musical achievement at the very highest leve and irrevocably damaged his reputation. Unacceptable that the incident that has resulted in his departure undoubtedly was, we, as a civilised society, should also make sure that we equally celebrate what he has achieved so that there is a balance to counter what seems to be the current penchant for a “holier than thou” kneejerk reaction which so often simply condemns wrongdoing and nothing else. “Only he who is without sin may cast the first stone” springs to mind.
Highly unlikely this was the only incident, just the most public and therefore the last straw. This is entirely self-inflicted and frankly it’s surprising it went on for so long before anything negative happened to him.
I think the actual saying is “let he who has not punched a baritone in the face for no reason cast the first stone”
If it had been only one incident, he wouldn’t have been fired. He had *for decades* a well-known reputation for extremely inappropriate displays of temper.
If he had been publicly exposed and put on leave 25 years ago, as he should have been, he might have learned some self-control and been able to continue his career until he died.
We’re you at Wimbledon College?
Reprehensible behaviour and creative activity, are not mutually exclusive, and there are numerous examples in music, Wagner being one, together with quite a few Soviet and German composers who ‘accommodated’ themselves within the national structures of the time. This does not mean that the music is of lesser statue just that people and societies cannot be judged in simple terms. Having said this there is no excuse for bullying in any context.
Not “one” incident but the very public culmination of many such documented and reported physical assaults on orchestral musicians. Being a good musician and founder of orchestras does not turn a megalomaniac into an all-powerful god. This man is a bully and a menace, who should have been stopped long ago.
JEG didn’t say this, but perhaps we can imagine someone would:
‘But I must needs recount that to assault a presently-uninformed performer is integral to the historically-informed practice. Verily, JS Bach would not have abided a poor singer. Old Bach would have surely hurled an organ bench to make his sentiments known.’
Bach drew a knife on a squeaky bassoonist.
We need some research on that incident; which work was Bach conducting, and at which point in that work, did he draw the knife on the bassoonist? Thereafter, all truly authentic period performances of that work would require that the bassoon be played squeakily at that point and that the conductor threaten the bassoonist with a knife.
An anger management class populated solely with elderly white conductors should be a reality television show.
God knows there are plenty of candidates.
That actually would be entertaining. But I wonder how hard it would be to find orchestra players willing to take part in the experiment.
Statement by the MCO:
“The Board of the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras (MCO) has made the decision that Sir John Eliot Gardiner, founder of the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, will not be returning to the organisation.”
As the agent of several of Sir John Eliot’s favourite singers I have been working with the Monteverdi Choir for well over a decade on countless projects.
I am not privy to what went on behind the scenes in the past months, so it may well be that the board had no other choice to act as they did, but to make THIS kind of public statement, contradicting Sir John Eliot’s personal statement, kicking someone, who is already down is utterly reprehensible and disgusting on a human and moral level. Not allowing their founder to save face and resign on his own accord? Not even political parties stoop so low.
These people, who owe their jobs, positions, income and “importance” solely to Sir John Eliot should be deeply ashamed of themselves. What they have done is far more deplorable than what Sir John Eliot may have done to others over the years.
‘…may have done’?
Yes, Mr Blick! I wrote “…may have done to others over the years”
There are many stories and rumors. While I was present during the incident in La Cote, I can’t be the judge of all the hearsay that has been going around for years. Can you?
The Board issued its statement before Gardiner did. So, if anything, he contradicted the Board.
My condolences on the loss of your fees.
Oh, and this —
“These people, who owe their jobs, positions, income and ‘importance’ solely to Sir John Eliot should be deeply ashamed of themselves.”
The board members who fired Gardiner are board members of a UK registered charity and do not get paid, so they by no means owe their jobs and income to Gardiner. It’s the other way around.
I am surprised that a prominent agent in the classical music industry does not know this already.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Oh so violence and abuse isn’t so bad? Save face?
He should have to pay for the damage he’s done to everyone. Instead he gets to leave quietly. It’s 2024. People can do better, and there are many who do.
Utter rubbish. He has behaved horribly for decades. Singers, musicians, technicians and staff have worked in fear of him for years. [redacted]
So because “these people, who owe their jobs, positions, income and ‘importance’ solely to Sir John Eliot,” Gardiner is entitled to punch an employee each year? That’s what you’re saying?
So you’re saying they should have made like the Catholic Church and covered it up in order to save face. That JEGs legacy is more important than abuse. Ffs, he makes music and is paid for it. If all the musical organisations in the world were suddenly to receive no funding, music will go on. It is in our nature to make music. If JEG had instead died, these ensembles will still go on spectacularly well. He is not the ensemble. Yes talented, but also deeply flawed. One does not excuse the other and nor should it. Could it be you’re worried your fees will dry up for being so reliant on his name?
Succeeded by three young males.
No black, gypsy or lesbian conductor for the team?
How do you know, what these people purport to be? These days, those are no longer “facts”, but rather, self-identifications.
It was already Baroque. He was just trying to fix it.
Oh well.
I’ve heard some of the MCO performances since Gardiner’s departure. Although the ensemble is still strong, they’ve lost their special flare without Gardiner. Sousa is mediocre at best, and his Beethoven performances worse than most second rate conductors in German opera houses. They will need to find a serious leader if they intend to have further chapters.
Quite agree, that Sousa Beethoven cycle was breathless, hectoring and entirely lacking in insight. The MCO are digging their own grave. They made a mistake in not building strong relationships with a roster of other conductors earlier.
“They made a mistake in not building strong relationships with a roster of other conductors earlier.”
And who do you think prevented that? Not the least of JEG’s failings as a responsible artistic leader was his insistence on monopolising the limelight well into what should have been his emeritus years – and selfishly failing to plan any sort of succession to ensure continuity and stability for his employees. Compare and contrast with the careful, collegiate long-term planning of his (musically superior) HIP contemporaries Trevor Pinnock and Christopher Hogwood.
Quite agree!
About time, as anyone in the industry knows. The list of incidents he was supposedly involved with is fairly lengthy and extends over some time.
A tragic end to an illustrious career, blighted by oontificating, pious hoo-ha from the Orchestra. This incident seems to have arisen from a momentary loss of self-control by an elderly gentleman who seems to have inflicted no serious injury upon his rather-more-youthful victim. This sort of thing happens on rugby pitches every day. Yes, of course the incident should not have happened, but it seems to me that an element of over-judgemental claptrap regarding ‘elf and safety has infected the Orchestra as a result of which the paying public will be now be deprived forever from seeing a truly great conductor at work. Those who made this decision sound to me like a bunch of unforgiving zealots.
A ‘gentleman’ does not go around punching subordinates in the face. Elderly or otherwise.
Good riddance.
Oh get a grip. This was just the latest in a very long line of “incidents”, assaults and more. This was just one of few that got out. He could and probably shouldhave been locked up years ago.
Sorry – meant to write “pontificating”. Fat finger syndrome.
Justice delayed is justice denied. Whether you think his dismissal is right or wrong, it’s outrageous that this process took almost a year.
Gardiner spent the year attending various types of therapy and anger management courses. He attempted to rehabilitate himself. It seems that the board felt he had not sufficiently done so. That process needed time but unfortunately the outcome was not a good one for Gardiner or the board or the musicians – especially not for the musicians, who have lost income this year and who may not be offered as much work by the organization in future years, as Gardiner was a key selling point.
Why does every English-language press release feel the need to pepper its text with mindless superlatives? ‘Extraordinary’, ‘Phenomenal’ ‘Illustrious’, ‘Monumental’ etc. It makes them sound more like university arts clubs than international orchestras. Lord Reith forbade BBC announcers from referring to someone as ‘famous’. ‘Either they are, in which case there’s no need for it, or they’re not, in which case it would be untrue’.
Ah, a brilliant reference to the phenomenal Lord Reith! Seriously though, I agree; it seems to me that these extravagant adjectives seem to be particularly common in the music industry, especially with respect to instrumental soloists, opera singers and, of course, conductors.
I am often fascinated by obituaries in SD with straplines like ‘Farewell to Outsanding Clarinet, 107’, with the following kind of tribute:
‘We are sad to report the death of Oscar Katzgruber, aged 107. He was fourth clarinet in the Little Rock Philharmonic for 68 years, playing under the baton of Maurice Abravanel who guested for the LRP during the Korean War, and Leonard Bernstein, playing the opening glissando of Rhapsody in Blue at the unforgettable LRP concert on 29th June 1962 in the Thomas Jefferson Hall.’
This is inevitably followed by a contributor saying: I remember that concert; I played next to him – generous to a fault; he bought me an ice cream in the interval. He later seduced the oboist’s wife and they had seven children, one of whom was the wonderful cellist Irena Pluderstocker.
It is contributions like these that make SD such a fascinating read!
Spoiled musicians who think the world owes them a living.
So I don’t know the background. Was he a serial puncher or not? I have to admit I have been tempted to punch someone occasionally, especially if he has hurled abuse at me!
Yes, he was a serial puncher with a history of physical and emotional abuse of musicians and management staff. Ask any long-serving figure in the UK early music scene (or any of the symphony orchestras who worked with him). At least one UK orchestra had him on an unofficial blacklist because of his known behavioural issues. This case was simply the first that went public (or at least went beyond a few specialist publications) and which proved immune to the usual industry code of silence. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The ideal candidate to take over from JEG is Richard Egarr, who has just completed his final season as Music Director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in California.
One of the greatest ever. I will listen to his Bach cantatas box again and the MCO can shovel their “Respect & Dignity at Work policy” where the sun never shines.
‘I will listen to his Bach cantatas box again…’ The real question is: will JEG box again?
They wouldn’t even exist without him… First get name and fame, then discard the person who brought you there like a piece of garbage? Incredible…
Behave like a piece of garbage, get discarded like a piece of garbage.
God, old enough to know better in regard to hell raising…
As a conductor, chorus coach and artist in his chosen genres, John Eliot is and has been an inspirational genius “
It was my privilege to have worked with him and his team developing the opening funding of his Bach cantata pilgrimage across Europe in the early 2000s.
I first saw him in concert with the Monteverdis conducting the Christmas Oratorio at the Barbican in December 1996. His hushed opening bars blew me away for all time -the unwrapping of a Christmas gift for an enthralled audience-and are a precious all time memory uncoiling his vigorous extrovert take on how he saw this work.
A musicaltowerhouse, and
intellectually rigorous too as his books about Bach clearly show.
Clearly also he has suffered some of the disadvantages of being that driven- and what happened at the end needn’t and shouldn’t have.
But when the dust has settled, John Eliots place is up there in the musical firmament .
Surely, he will be confined to the fires of hell.
Yes, but he will have some great company in that inferno: Wagner, Caravaggio, Gesualdo, James Levine, Benvenuto Cellini, Malcolm Arnold et al…
You’re probably right, but the dust has not settled yet; that will take some time.
Wokey tosh. MCO will fade into redundancy without JEG.
And so the show continues, cancel, cancel, cancel, bend the knee, bend the knee. It’s not a surprise that standards are lower than ever, as we sack anyone that was ever good. And the worst is yet to come—new allegations will surface and they’ll cancel all of his recordings, and it’ll become impossible for any of the great musicians he developed to talk or say anything nice about him. My guess is they’ll get Dudamel in a couple of years.
I wonder if there are in modern world some place to redemption and forgiveness. It sounds old, but in order to reach our peace are necessary.
The theory is that you get redemption and forgiveness not in the modern world but in the world to come… There’s always hope for those benighted souls who have been weighed in the scales and found wanting, like Stalin and Gareth Southgate…
“The organisation is proud to have enabled and promoted his long and illustrious career.” It seems to me that the opposite is true – the organisation simply would not have existed and would not have established its worldwide reputation without Gardiner. While no concert or recording would have been a success without the hard work of fine singers and instrumentalists as well, they were selected by Gardiner and attracted to working with HIM.
Whether or not MCO can thrive, or even survive, without Gardiner is an open question. In commercial as well as artistic terms, Gardiner was the USP.
I think it’s important to see both sides of this. Whilst violence is clearly unacceptable – creativity, passion, drive and artistic leadership is a desirable attribute in a conductor and founder of not only an orchestra but a new way of doing things musically. JEG’s misfortune is that, as a complex character, he wrapped up all of these things. As a former player in his orchestra(s) I would suggest that everything he did was in the pursuit of his musical vision, and for that (plus all that nice work) – I support him.
Better late than never … why did it take the board so long to realise what an appalling human he is.
I recall a rehearsal where he asked a female principal cello in front of all her colleagues ‘ if she was having her period after a less than perfect rendition of an orchestral solo’ Good riddance !!
MCO are going to find out very quickly what drew their audience.
if Beethoven,Mahler, Toscanini etc. could tinetravel to modern times, none of them would last longer than a week in a 21st century professional orchestra.
You think they would all be too thick to adapt their behaviour to suit different standards?
Who gets to be the “diversity hire?”
So sorry to hear that. A wonderful
Conductor
Did you ever have to put up with him?
Some people should after violence, go gently into that good night.