Breaking: Wall Street fires its director of music
NewsTrinity Church Wall Street has just shared this message:
A Message from the Rector
On the evening of Feb. 28, 2022, we learned from social media postings about allegations of sexual misconduct against Julian Wachner, which date back to 2014. Trinity promptly engaged a third party investigator to look into the matter, and Julian was placed on administrative leave on March 1.
The investigation is ongoing, and thus the investigator has not yet made any determination about the veracity of the 2014 allegations. Still, we have concluded based on recent information that Julian has otherwise conducted himself in a manner that is inconsistent with our expectations of anyone who occupies a leadership position. For this reason, Trinity has decided to end Julian’s employment with Trinity as of today.
We are grateful to those who have reached out to Trinity, and we are committed to providing an environment where open, honest communications and the highest standards of professionalism are the expectation, and where information suggesting that members of our community may not be meeting these expectations is acted upon promptly.
We also want to reiterate our commitment to and support for members of The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, members of our Music department, and all singers and musicians who participate in Trinity-sponsored programs.
Decisive action. Compare to the Catholic church.
But the very quickness of the action raises even more questions: what did they know, and when did they know it?
No one is naive, in these cases, time and time again, people knew, people talked, people let things go on…
Seems like he took more than his fair share of the equity and was touching others’ assets.
Not funny
Immediate administrative leave I can understand, but I think firing can come after the investigation is complete and the accused has has a chance to reply to the accusations.
Did you see the screen shots of the emails he wrote to his accuser after his harassment? It’s pretty damned obvious.
One would think a person is entitled to due process…
In a court of law one is. New York State has at-will employment, however, and an employer can fire an employee without cause.
That’s true, although Julian very likely had an employment contract that would ensure he couldn’t be arbitrarily fired for no reason at all. And that contract almost certainly included a provision saying that he could be fired for misconduct — which seems to be (judging from Trinity’s euphemized statement) precisely what happened.
I’m thinking there’s a backstory here that hasn’t been made public, and made the decision to fire inevitable.
Yes – I have heard there is a backstory here.
The civil suit will be damming for someone.
Read the statement carefully, and you can infer that he was not fired over the 2014 incident with the Juilliard employee:
“… we have concluded based on recent information that Julian has otherwise conducted himself in a manner that is inconsistent with our expectations of anyone who occupies a leadership position.”
Prayers for his wife and kids.
Yes indeed.
Prayers also for the extraordinary music program he and his colleagues have built up, which — besides the high-level music provided for services (including a Sunday Compline service that is largely improvised on the spot) — has made an extraordinary difference for classical music in New York City and for cultural life in Lower Manhattan since 9/11/2001.
I really, really hope that nobody on Trinity’s vestry sees Julian’s firing as an opportunity to shrink the concert programming there and that they hire a successor who can maintain it.
For his wife and kids? Ok, sure.
How about also praying for every woman he’s groped and/or assaulted, intimidated into silence?
For every academic institution with a staff member who chuckled and said “ohh, you know how he can be…”
For every music student interpreting this privilege as something that comes with power, and learns to keep quiet if they want to be hired?
This is a “church” that has an endowment worth $7 billion. Yes, you read that right. They are sitting on $7 billion. A church!
Some years ago most of Trinity’s board resigned because they didn’t think the church was doing enough to help the poor.
Their endowment has grown enormously since then and I still don’t really know what they do at Trinity other than produce high profile classical music concerts, and manage their own real estate portfolio.
Just to be clear, Trinity Church Wall Street does not have a cash-and-securities endowment of $7 billion from which it can draw $350 million a year.
That $7 billion is mostly lower Manhattan real estate, what’s left of the 215 acres that Queen Anne gave the church in 1705. It’s not exactly a liquid asset.
The large majority of the rental income from that land and the buildings on it goes toward running and maintaining those buildings. The rest finds the church’s operations — which include, in addition to religious services: free meals and a food pantry for people in need; a 251-unit apartment building for low-income seniors and disabled people; a re-entry program for people released from prison; free social workers to help people with getting city, state and federal assistance; programs to help new immigrants and refugees; and a philanthropic arm that made $46.7 million in cash grants to other charitable organizations in 2021 alone.
That plus the music programming I just mentioned in another comment.
Trinity Church Wall Street has its flaws, just like everyone and everything else on this earth, but it is not evil, and it is not a Goldman Sachs that exists to make its own people more money.
Wow. The Wikipedia entry on Julian Wachner has already been updated with this news.
And julianwachner.com has been taken offline.
What is it with Music Directors at Trinity? The previous one was an alcoholic sexual predator. And now this guy ..
An ill-tempered, abusive alcoholic predator. He reportedly used to scream so much during rehearsals that spittle would fly onto the singers, and one day the tenors all showed up wearing raincoats.
And the music he made was often dull.
At least Julian made music worth showing up to hear. (I gave up going in person to Bach at One and started streaming it instead when it got to the point where you had to arrive 40 minutes early to get a seat that wasn’t off behind the brass section.)
I believe him.
https://www.julianwachner.com/