San Francisco sinking
OrchestrasMembers of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus voted unanimously last night to authorize a strike. The vote polled 98.1% of eligible members. The first strike is likely to hit Verdi’s Requiem on Thursday.
The orchestra management wants to cut chorus fees by 65%.
The only question is whether the choristers start their strike before the musicians vote on action of their own.
Trouble at Mill….
“The only question is whether the choristers start their strike before the musicians vote on action of their own”? Surely you meant to say choristers and instrumentalists or orchestra members, didn’t you? Choristers ARE musicians.
This an age-old problem re: relegating singers (vocal musicians!) to a lower class. Some of the most powerful works require a strong chorus. Do we really want to lose the best of Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, Verdi, etc. ?
The orchestra is still in contract through November so they can’t strike before then except honoring the chorus picket line for those specific concerts. AGMA represents the singers and AFM the players and they’re on different contract schedules.
There are 30 professional singers (eligible members, above) in the 152-member Symphony Chorus, though most of the volunteer members of the Chorus say they would respect a picket line.
The San Francisco Symphony is in a tough position. The musicians and choristers understandably want more resources and support, but the financial strain on these organizations is immense. These institutions rely heavily on donor generosity and public funding, and they’re also tasked with presenting world-class performances. It’s a challenging balancing act.
The chorus, while highly skilled and unionized, is one of the most unnecessarily expensive elements of the organization, especially when you compare it to community choruses found in many other major cities. Unfortunately, for management, that’s a tough expense to justify, especially when the public may not fully appreciate the difference between a professional chorus and a community one. The musicians, supported by charity, risk appearing ungrateful to the very donors who make their careers possible.
It’s an unfortunate reality, but something’s got to give. Whether it’s through cutting costs or restructuring, the financial health of the symphony must come first if it’s to survive long term.
Is the jobs of the stewards of the orchestra to ensure it exists for decades to come? Or is it to bleed itself dry paying incredibly highly paid people even more?
Yes, greedy musicians will someday run out of other people’s money.
instead of a strike, they could get a second job at Target.
Lots of disharmony, innit?
This is bizarre. They announced the major program cut and the departure of Esa-Pekka after this season, citing the financial problem back in Spring. And at the same time, they announced this season program that includes this Verdi choral work as a season opener conducted by Esa-Pekka. So we assumed that the financial problem was taken care of, and bought the subscription with this concert ticket.
Did anything change since the announcement? Did the financials go suddenly really bad that they can’t afford the 32 professional singers they were planning to have when they announced the season?
If so, doners and patrons deserve to know what changed. Since the cost side is pretty predictable, if anything changed the last few months, it must be the income side. What happened to the cash in flows? Did they miss forecast the ticket sales? Did they miss forecast the donation? How much was the gap?
Even community church chorus always have professional section leaders who are paid. Professional groups like American Bach Soloists pay all singers. For big chorus with 150 members, it makes sense that members want committed leadership group to keep it organized. 32 professional singers singing 10 works can’t be that expensive unlike 100 instrumentalists doing 100 works. But exactly how much are they trying to trim off from the chorus? Is the Symphony in such financial crisis that they can’t even figure out the small gap and are willing to destroy the season opening?
Or did something happen to the endowment fund? We all know there are rules about withdrawals from endowment. Having said that, they got over $300 million endowment fund. Are they maybe hiding big unrealized loss in their fund so that they don’t want to touch it in order to prevent the accounting re-evaluation? Maybe that’s why we read about the building renovation, are they trying to capitalize on the building value in order to fill the gap? Of course, I have no fact, all only speculation, but they should explain to us what’s going on with their financials so that we don’t start speculating wrong.
In any situation, if they didn’t have the foresight of financial gaps, that’s management problem. Please don’t put them on musicians and audience. We hope to hear Esa-Pekka conduct Verdi Requiem.