Abu Bratsche

It's the union's fault

“Union rules” and “union bosses” is, next to “orchestras are dinosaurs,” the longest-running meme in our business. A truly weird example surfaced yesterday:

An award-winning composer gave the Brooklyn Philharmonic more than $70,000 to perform his magnum opus, only to watch in agony as the cash-strapped orchestra "butchered" the piece to avoid paying musicians overtime, a new lawsuit alleges.

Why we’ll survive

Sam Bergman, my other brother-in-bratsche-blogging, has a post up on the Minnesota Orchestra Inside the Classics blog that takes on the issue of how orchestras adapt to economic stress:

 … orchestras, when they're being run correctly, function according to the broader economies they are a part of. Since we're dependent on donations from individuals, foundations, and corporations, we function as a tiny subset of the larger "charitable giving" economy, so what we can spend in a given year (on salaries, benefits, day-to-day expenses, whatever) is directly tied to how much our supporters can afford to give us.

We also function as part of the distinct American orchestral economy, in which a small number of "major" orchestras compete (through the salary and benefits offered) for the services of the most elite musicians emerging each year from music schools, in the same way that elite law firms compete for the best law school grads. 99% or more of the students who emerge from college with a music degree will never earn anywhere near the amount of money that the alarmists cite - most won't even wind up with careers as performers at all.

So taken in a broader context, pronouncements of the unsustainability of our business model (and if history is any guide, there will be many more of these in the coming months) are more or less entirely contradicted by the self-evident ability of most orchestras to adapt to changes in our specific economies. The headlines trumpeting layoffs and salary givebacks aren't evidence of the failure of a business model. They're a demonstration of how the model bends without breaking.

I addressed the same issue slightly differently here, explaining why our industry is prone to salary contractions. Sam’s point is more that our industry has proven able, over several economic downturns, to make the needed adjustments.

Strike-breaking in Madison?

It appears that the management of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra is leading an active fantasy life:

...But there's more scheduled for April 24. That's also when the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra says musicians must respond to its "last, best, final offer" to end the dispute, issued March 23. And that's not the only deadline. Chamber Orchestra executive director Doug Gerhart says the musicians must say by April 22 whether they will play the group's Concerts on the Square series, which begins June 24.

"We're going ahead with the plan," says Gerhart of the summer series. If the Chamber Orchestra does not get a satisfactory response from the musicians by the deadline, Gerhart notes, "We will explore other options." He won't say what those options might be.

Behave

My old friend Patty Mitchell, the most prolific orchestra musician blogger I know, responded to a post of mine on the subject of young conductors as follows:

...I suspect some conductors might want to respond to Robert’s note. Not that Robert would do anything like the things that I find irksome, but I’ve grown quite weary of orchestra members who try to teach conductors lessons. I hate it when musicians stop listening. It can be really clear when an orchestra has pretty much dismissed a conductor. I hate the snide remarks some orchestra members make, and I’m especially upset when a musician deliberately plays crassly just because he or she feels the need to express some anger, or teach a conductor a lesson..

We musicians can be a tough crowd. I’ve seen it far too often. It gets very tiring.

The end of an era

It appears that the Music Performance Trust Fund has come to the end of the road:

From:      John C. Hall, Jr. – [Music Performance Fund] Trustee
To:           [lots of AFM officers and staff]
Date:       April 2, 2009
After over sixty years of employment of thousands of professional musicians performing for audiences in the millions, the MUSIC PERFORMANCE TRUST FUND has come to an ending of its basic financing, and we are therefore forced into commencing the process attendant to running down its operations.

MPTF has not provided a lot of funding to orchestras and orchestra musicians, but it has provided some. My orchestra has used MPTF funding for so-called "docent" programs in schools. And MPTF has, during the past decade, also funded some orchestra radio broadcasts.

I've always had reservations about the philosophy behind the MPTF, and its effects on the functioning of the AFM as a labor union have been mixed at least. But this still seems to me a very sad development.

When bad auditions happen to good candidates

My BBB Charles Noble wrote a short post pointing to a longer one by National Symphony bassist Jeffrey Weisner on the problem of orchestras holding national auditions but not hiring anyone from those auditions. It’s worth reading in full, but I’ll excerpt his main conclusions:

...the reality is that in most cases almost everyone on a committee wants to hire one of the finalists in every audition. The failure to hire someone is not a failing of the players in most cases - it is a failure of the audition committee and the modern audition system to properly function and do its job. Here is the real message you should take away from a "no-hire" audition:

"The committee and music director were too divided by artistic opinion, personality conflict, or lack of mature decision-making to select one person from among the candidates. Because of the requirements of the modern audition system, our only solution is to start again"...

Does this mean that it is always wrong when a committee doesn't hire anyone? Not at all. Orchestra jobs usually have lifetime tenure - this means that people on a committee may have to live with someone's musical personality for 30 or 40 years. By ensuring that the person chosen is acceptable to at least half of a committee, the audition system makes it more likely that there will be a harmonious functioning of the orchestra as we work on playing well and making music together. But there are definitely many times when the no-hire situation is a default solution for a divided committee and not the best choice available.

These are good points, and I’ve seen these dynamics play out many times. But, as a member of many audition committees for my orchestra (and having served on many in previous jobs), I’m not sure I agree that’s what usually happens in a no-hire audition.

We’ve had several in Milwaukee. For principal positions, they’re not even exceptional. Since I came here 21 years ago, we’ve hired sixteen musicians for principal positions. And we’ve had seven auditions for permanent principal positions that resulted in no one being hired. (My hiring 22 years ago was a second audition for the position after an earlier no-hire). So close to 1/3 of auditions for principal positions here do not end with someone being hired.

Having watched, or participated in, most of these, I can say that many (not all) of the no-hires did have the dynamics that Jeff Weisner described. But in most of those cases, there was not a great deal of enthusiasm for hiring anyone. And some auditions ended with a clear consensus that none of the candidates were good enough.

I can only remember one or two auditions where the committee, or even a majority of the committee, really wanted to hire one person and the Music Director didn’t, or vice versa. When the Music Director strongly believed in one candidate, that candidate got hired. When most of the committee strongly believed in one candidate, that candidate often got hired. Punting and not hiring anyone was generally the result only when neither the Music Director nor the committee were enthusiastic about anyone.

So why are committees and Music Directors so cautious? I think it’s because no one wants to make a mistake that’s hard to rectify. Even though new hires generally don’t have tenure protections and look very like “at-will” employees, they quickly become part of the orchestra’s community. Firing them is hard on everyone, protections or no. So probationary musicians usually get tenure.

That’s not a bad system. But it does place a premium on getting the initial hiring decision right. So committees and Music Directors are unwilling to take any more chances than are necessary.

That’s hard on those auditioning for jobs, I know. But, at best, only one person gets hired from an audition for an open position. Isn't it in that person’s best interests that they not be fired in two years? And all the people that weren’t hired because the committee and Music Director were cautious can always audition next time.

Instead of trying to fix this problem, how about talking about using the wonderful technology we didn’t have when we designed the current system 40 years ago to make this process better for everyone – those hiring and those wanting to be hired both?

Of being in a large and crowded kettle of very hot water

I was thinking of writing a post on the growing list of orchestras in which musicians have negotiated pay cuts, but my brother-in-bratsche-blogging Charles Noble beat me to it. Read it and weep. The only reason it doesn’t cause me to sleep like a baby (ie waking up every two hours screaming) is that I’m close enough to retirement (and have planned well enough (I hope) for that day) that having the orchestra business go pear-shaped would only be a disaster for me and not the end of my world. Selfish, I know.

Do orchestras discriminate?

There's a new article of mine of the Polyphonic site that examines the question of gender and age discrimination in orchestras. I was a little surprised by my conclusions.