Abu Bratsche

When the excellent becomes the enemy of everything

(cross-posted from the Polyphonic blog)

While doing some research on the New Hampshire Music Festival situation, I came across a blog post by Henry Fogel that I found both interesting on its merits and quite relevant to what's been going on at the NHMF.

Back in May on his blog on the ArtsJournal site, Henry wrote about becoming Festival Director for the NHMF:

David Graham, the imaginative and courageous president of the festival, shares some of my feelings on this topic, and having read about them in this blog he began a relationship with me that has resulted in this exciting position. As we talked over the past year, David and I realized that we shared a deep passion for the musical experience as something transcendent, something so thrilling that one didn't walk out of a concert and immediately go to a post-concert party with a dance band playing, because the experience you had just had wouldn't let you do that... We both believed that, with some obvious exceptions, the majority of concerts that we had been a part of were fine concerts. And we both believed that fine was a terrible word for describing a concert. A really good performance of anything should shake you to your roots. If it is a light classical work, you should almost not be able to resist getting up and dancing or singing. If it is a late Shostakovich symphony, you should be emotionally shaken to your core. Every performance should be a performance that matters--a performance that brings a specific, deeply felt interpretive point of view from the performers. Just rendering the notes on the page is not, in fact, making music.

This sounds pretty anodyne. But the more I thought about it, the more problematic it seemed. And I came to realize that Henry had fallen into Voltaire's classic trap of making the excellent the enemy of the good - or perhaps even the enemy of the possible.

Is "fine" a "terrible word for describing a concert"? Do all concerts need to be "transcendent"? What happens when we make transcendent excellence the standard, not of aspiration, but of acceptability?

It's not a standard that normal people apply to most things in their lives, after all. "Fine" is not a terrible word to describe a working relationship, or even a marriage. "Quite good" is not a damning criticism of a movie. "I had fun" is not a slam at a baseball game. "The best ever" is not a criterion most people use to decide whether or not they'll go to a fireworks display on the Fourth of July.

There are two reasons why this is not only OK, but actually the way things have to be. First of all, people's expectations are rarely that high for any experience - and, when they are, the experience invariably falls way short of the expectations.

I don't go to a baseball game expecting to see Sandy Koufax face Willy Mays with the pennant on the line. I go expecting to see professional athletes perform at a very high level, and that's what usually happens. I also expect to have fun with my son, down a good bratwurst or two, and generally enjoy the outing. Every so often I get to see a really great game, or a really amazing play, or a really exciting at-bat. But that's a bonus. I go because I like to watch baseball, not because I expect to see something that fans will be talking about for years.

I don't go to a movie expecting to have the same experience I had the first time I saw "2001." I don't step outside to watch the local country club's fireworks with the expectation that I'll see anything much different than I saw last year. I don't talk to my friends expecting that profound conversations will happen.

Do most our audiences really expect to hear one of the greatest performances of their lives every time they come to hear us? I think they're smarter than that. Obviously they don't come to be bored, or annoyed at imprecision, or wondering why we're not trying very hard. But I don't think they expect magic every night.

If I think of the times I've experienced that in the concert hall, on either side of the edge of the stage, I come up with a pretty small number of concerts - and often very small parts of those concerts. I heard Alfred Brendel create magic in K. 595 with the Berlin Phil in Carnegie a few years ago, but what I remember was how he played the the first eight bars of the slow movement. That was transcendent; the rest of piece either set that up or flowed from that. And I would have enjoyed the concert, and been glad I'd gone, if that hadn't happened.

There are two dangers in setting up transcendental excellence as the standard of measuring success. The first is that it's unachievable on a regular basis. It thus defines the basis for a rich musical culture - lots of concerts and lots of performers - as failing most of the time. If we tell people that only the very, very best performances are worth attending, pretty soon we won't have any performances - or performers - at all.

The second problem is that such a standard can justify almost any kind of change. If the status quo fails almost all of the time, then of course we have to try something different - and almost anything is likely to be an improvement. After all, failing is failing, right? Let's try something different; at worst, it can only fail. And we know the status quo does that, don't we?

That, I believe, is why making transcendental excellence a standard of acceptability, rather than simply an aspiration, is dangerous. And that is why it's so relevant to what's happening with the NHMF.

I have no doubt most of the Festival's concerts fail to reach the exalted heights to which Henry aims. I have no doubt that most of my orchestra's concerts fail in the same way, as no doubt did most of the Chicago Symphony's concerts during Henry's tenure. I suspect that's even true of most of the concerts by The Knights, a group that Henry has held up as a model of exciting music-making.

Replacing half the Festival orchestra with 20 other musicians is not going to fix that.

A Coup-de-Festival

(cross-posted from the Polyphonic blog)

A friend of mine alerted me last week to a recent series of events at the New Hampshire Music Festival. I've been trying to make sense of what I've read in news articles, on the Festival musicians' website, and from a outside organization of dissident supporters called SOON (Save Our Orchestra Now).

The only adequate word in the English language to describe the current situation is the one that begins with "clusterf" and ends with "ck." It's an important story for our industry, made doubly important by the involvement in the Festival of one of the most prominent people in our field, former Chicago Symphony CEO and former League of American Orchestras president Henry Fogel.

Yesterday a critical meeting of the NHMF Board took place. Some idea of its nature can be gleaned from the following appeal from SOON:

Word has just been received that the Annual Meeting for the NHMF will take place at Gilford H.S. at 4:00 PM on Wed., Nov. 18, 2009. Part of the mailed announcement was a summary of proposed changes in the bylaws. Article IV of the proposed changes reads as follows: "The Board of directors may elect persons nominated by the Governance Committee to serve on the Board of Incorporators for terms of 1 year. "The Incorporators shall support and serve as a resource and advisory group to the Board of Directors and Officers of the Corporation." Also being proposed are Amendments to the Articles of Agreement for the Corporation. Article 5 reads as follows: "There are no members of the corporation. The only persons who have governance authority or control over the Corporation are the Board of Directors." The existing bylaws, dated 2/13/2004, state that any contributor shall be an Incorporator (Article III), that Incorporators shall be the ones who elect Directors (Article IV.1) and that any changes in the bylaws must be approved by a 2/3 vote of the Board of Directors, "subject to repeal or change by action of the Incorporators". The proposed changes will exclude donors from being Incorporators unless they are chosen by the Board of Directors. Moreover, election of Board members shall be by Board members only, and Board members will be able to change the bylaws at their whim without input from the Festival contributors. These changes must be defeated at the upcoming meeting.

They weren't. According to an article this morning in the Laconia Citizen:

An announced change in the festival's articles of agreement and its bylaws at the beginning of the meeting prevented incorporators (or donors) from making motions or taking votes at the meeting, a move which upset some. Later in the meeting, Susan Weatherbie, vice-chair of the board of directors, said the festival's bylaws had not been reviewed since they were created in the 1950s. She said changing the bylaws and articles of agreement was necessary to help the festival run more efficiently and to streamline the decision-making process...Weatherbie said, as a business, the festival needs clear, strong leadership and it needs to address the problem of declining ticket sales. She said leaving the articles of agreement as they were would delay what the board feels are necessary changes. "We cannot and will not be held back," Weatherbie said, by those who would try to "subvert and threaten our plan to reinvigorate our orchestra."

It's worth noting that the Board and management apparently consider musicians who don't like what they're doing to be not only subversive, but subject to termination for doing so. A letter from David Graham, Festival President and CEO, sent to the musicians on October 13, 2009, made that crystal clear:

We have been very clear that our new model is built on the concept of collaboration in music making and a generosity for nurturing one another and students. This is a core value for the Festival going forward and is essential to our success. The actions of some incumbent musicians are clearly inconsistent with that value. We are aware that some incumbent musicians continue to work to support SOON and the objectives it stands for and continue to publicly criticize the new direction the Festival has chosen to take. As we proceed to implement the Personnel Policy, we reserve the right to fairly evaluate whether those musicians seeking employment in the summer 2010 season can be expected to support the festival and the new direction it is taking based on all the circumstances.

And people still wonder why musicians want to be unionized.

The Citizen article went on to report:

Instead of having all incorporators vote on key issues, Weatherbie said the festival will form a new board of incorporators that will act in an advisory role to the board. Comments from the audience were held until the end of the meeting, at which time many wanted to know why there were no annual reports or at least copies of financial statements made available to the audience. McLear said after the meeting the was adjourned that it was an oversight and that copies should have been available. Terry Thomason of Gilford said he felt "morally and ethically" bound to speak at the meeting. Thomason said he has been a patron for more than 20 years and, for most of those years, he bragged to friends across the country and abroad about the first-class orchestra in the backwoods setting of the Lakes Region. He said last year, he felt things were changing, and not for the better. "I thought, this is not my orchestra anymore," Thomason said...Finding out about the decision to take voting privileges away from incorporators was especially disappointing, he said. "Shutting down all input from the people who pay the bills and fill the seats is reprehensible," Thomason said. He added that, had he been allowed, he would have made a motion to take a vote of no confidence in the board and management of the festival... The meeting also included a presentation on the festival's education programs, which involve working with preschool and early grade school children, using music to enhance brain development and learning capabilities. David Graham, president of the festival, said music can help young children improve their memory, recognize patterns and think creatively.

Apparently much of the education program is performed by Deborah Graham, who's the Festival's development director - and also married to David Graham, whose total compensation in the 2007 Form 990 (the latest available on Guidestar.org), was reported as $125,828.

Grizzled veterans of the orchestral labor wars of the 1990s (and I am certainly one) will find particularly piquant the nugget that sitting at the head table, with David Graham, David Graham, Rusty McLear, Susan Weatherbie and Ron Sibley, was... Ralph Craviso.

There is much, more to this story, and I hope to write about it in the next few days.

From under a rock emerges A Strategy

The announcement on Friday of the previous weeks' vote by the Honolulu Symphony board to file for bankruptcy included this charming piece of thinking:

Given its current and projected financial status, the Society cannot continue to sustain a 64-piece orchestra, Mechling said. We cannot continue with business as usuaL... In order to do this we must be far more strategic, leaner, more efficient and willing to creatively and artistically work with a substantially smaller core group of musicians that will be the base for our sustainable future, she said.

And how do they plan on getting to that "substantially smaller core group of musicians?" They're going to start by ending health insurance coverage for half the orchestra:

Steve Dinion, chairman of the musicians orchestra committee, said the musicians were devastated by yesterday's announcement....He added that about half of the symphony's musicians were notified yesterday that their health insurance coverage would be terminated by HMSA.

That's a pretty clear hint to their thinking about the proper size for the HSO; as was, of course, the article's sub-headline:

Struggling orchestra to file for bankruptcy; may lay off 32 musicians.

But it's definitely "creative"; unilaterally ending health coverage for half of an orchestra is a stunt that's never been tried before.

They get no bonus creativity points for believing that Honolulu can support a full-time chamber orchestra, though; not only is downsizing an orchestra to a chamber group not original, but it's not going to work. Chamber orchestras are not an easier sell to funders, or audiences, than are the full-size model; just ask the musicians in St. Paul, who took a pay cut almost as as big as did the HSO musicians last winter.

It's this kind of thing that gives the doctrine of Hell emotional credibility.

Dept. of Homeland Obviousness update

If the person who wrote the headline for this article went to J-school, they should get a complete refund on their tuition:

Honolulu Symphony Bankruptcy Disturbs Musicians
Musicians Fear Uncertain Future

HONOLULU -- News of the Honolulu Symphony's bankruptcy announcement is sending shock waves through the community.

Now the city auditoriums department must scramble to find other acts to fill the Blaisdell on dozens of dates vacated by the Symphony.

Some young musicians, who just came from the Mainland to join the symphony, said they are wondering why they ever took the risk.

At the musician's union symphony musicians practice in spite of their uncertain future.

Matt Eckenhoff is one of eight musicians to just join the Honolulu Symphony that's now filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

"We are disappointed, really more than anything, we just want to play. That's our livelihood. That's how we make our money and we are sad we are not able to do that," said Eckenhoff.

Eckenhoff said he still has not been reimbursed thousands of dollars he paid to move to Hawaii from Houston and said he's just signed a six-month apartment lease.

"We haven't given up all hope yet," Eckenhoff said.

Honolulu Symphony files for moral bankruptcy

The truly shocking part of this announcement is the fourth paragraph (italicized):

The Honolulu Symphony Society Board of Directors announced on Friday that it has decided to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The announcement comes after more than a week of uncertainty. The chairman of the Honolulu Symphony's board of directors told KITV, that as of last week the symphony did not have enough money to make its payroll.

The city stopped selling tickets to the symphony's November events on Thursday because of rumors that the orchestra would cancel those concerts. The symphony said it will not be able to complete the rest of the season in 2009. It is uncertain if it will be able to complete other dates in 2010.

The board said that it voted on Oct. 30 to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and that it is $1 million in debt.

“Given its current and projected financial status, the society cannot continue to sustain a 64-piece orchestra,” Honolulu Symphony Society Executive Director Majken Mechling said in a written statement. “We cannot continue with business as usual.”

The musicians' union president Brien Matson had been waiting for a call back from Honolulu Symphony officials for one week to learn about the future of the 110-year-old organization.

"Even now, political leaders, citizens, corporations and foundations in this State have an opportunity to step in and become more involved with the future of their orchestra. It is a 'moment of truth' for Hawaii in terms of its actual cultural commitment," Honolulu Symphony Society Chairman Peter Shaindlin said in a written statement.

Why on earth would they vote to file for bankruptcy a week ago and not tell anyone (including the musicians) about it until today? Worse, they went around dodging phone calls from both the press and the union. Worse yet, until Thursday, they were selling tickets to events they knew wouldn't take place because the orchestra had no money and would be embroiled in bankruptcy proceedings for many, many moons.

Is there something in the pineapples out there in mid-Pacific that causes people to treat orchestras so badly?

Update: an article for the Pacific Business News had some even more interesting mendacitiies:

The Honolulu Symphony Society Board voted to file for bankruptcy at a meeting on Oct. 30 but waited a week to announce the decision, until after management met with the musicians’ union.

Which presumably is why management hasn't been returning the union's phone calls this past week.

The article also reported on management's thinking about the future. It's shockingly - strategic:

“Given its current and projected financial status, the Society cannot continue to sustain a 64-piece orchestra,” Mechling said. “We cannot continue with business as usual.”

The board, which met with the musicians’ union on Friday, has proposed reorganizing the symphony as a smaller orchestra whose costs would be more in line with revenues.

“Our suggested goal was to provide a year-round platform of music for our community that will reflect the desires of the community we serve,” Mechling said. “We want to bring to the residents of Hawaii classical, pop, local entertainment and new musical opportunities that the next generation can embrace, appreciate and sustain for the next 110 years.

“In order to do this we must be far more strategic, leaner, more efficient and willing to creatively and artistically work with a substantially smaller core group of musicians that will be the base for our sustainable future,” she said.

Whatever else the management can't do, they have certainly mastered the buzzwords of the current zeitgeist. But perhaps they think it's good that they're willing to "creatively and artistically work with" musicians, albeit "a substantially smaller core group of musicians." This will, of course, require the musicians to be far more strategic - especially in the balancing of their checkbooks.

Do they have strategic food pantries in Honolulu?

Yet more trouble for Honolulu

Things look bleak in Honolulu, even after a $1.8 million gift in September:

The chairman of the Honolulu Symphony's board of directors told KITV on Wednesday, that as of last Friday, the symphony did not have enough money to make its payroll.

Peter Shaindlin said he hopes to make an announcement about the symphony's future by the end of the day Friday. He refused to confirm whether the orchestra will file for bankruptcy or postpone part of its season.

The symphony has already put off two concerts this weekend.

Meanwhile, KITV has learned the musicians' union filed a complaint with the federal labor board, because the symphony reduced the pay of 25 part-time musicians retroactively, without negotiating with the union.

The union said that violates federal labor law.

Symphony leaders said they disagree with the union's complaint. The union filed its complaint with the National Labor Relations Board on Oct. 23, the same day part-time musicians found their paychecks were reduced by as much as 50 percent, according to Steve Dinion, a symphony percussionist and union spokesman. He said the amount of money in question is worth "several thousand dollars." He called the move "an unprecedented illegal attack on our contract."

The symphony has not made payments to the musicians' pension fund for months, Dinion also said. The symphony has already slashed $1 million from its operating budget this year, paring expenses down to $7 million, Dinion said. He said full-time musicians have taken 15 percent paycuts worth $500,000 of those savings.

In September, the symphony repaid employees 15 weeks of back pay, with the help of a $1.8 million dollar advance from the symphony's foundation's endowment.

A statement in an earlier article that the orchestra has "struggled financially for the past several years" is one of the great understatements of the year, though. For reasons which are not clear to me, the Honolulu Symphony has been a poster child for institutional dysfunction since before I came into this business, as a quick review of the archives of Senza Sordino will demonstrate.

from the April 1969 Senza Sordino:

Twenty-eight members including the orchestra chairman were dismissed from their positions in the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra by the new Musical Director, Mr. Robert LaMarchina, during May, 1969, three weeks after the end of the symphony seasons. The Symphony members had just ratified a new contract on the strength of specific promises by Mr. I. B. Peterson, president of Local 677, to set up a renewal committee from members of the orchestra and to enforce any decisions made by this committee. Subsequently, seventeen musicians appealed to the Local for review by Mr. Peterson's renewal committee; ten of these appeals were upheld by the committee, but only ONE orchestra member was reinstated as a direct result of union action. Four other members were given belated union support in the form of a compromise, and the other five upheld members including Orchestra Committee Chairman Lawrence Pride were refused any support by the Local. Mr. Pride, who had been very active for two years as chairman, was forced to dissolve his business, sell his home, and move from Hawaii with his wife and three children in order to find another position.

from the October 1984 Senza Sordino:

Honolulu Symphony musicians are in the second year of a three-year contract ratified last April following 17 months of negotiation, including 8 months of playing and talking. Season length was reduced from 38 to 34 weeks in 1983-84 while weekly wage remained frozen at $370.80... Offsetting minimal financial gains are complete changes in board leadership and management, establishment of a five-year plan and joint musicians-management-board committee, and a successful endowment campaign.

from the February 1987 Senza Sordino:

After having taken cuts in two successive negotiations, the HSO musicians became aware that our orchestra was out of control. Our jobs were going nowhere, the artistic integrity of the Honolulu Symphony was in jeopardy, and despite repeated attempts to help the management, things were getting worse. A terrible helplessness and hopelessness settled over the orchestra. Our (16-week) strike took the control of our jobs and our lives out of the hand and management and put it into our own...

from the February 1994 Senza Sordino:

On December 29, a Federal District Court in Honolulu confirmed arbitration awards requiring the Honolulu Symphony Society to pay nearly $400,000 in back pay and benefits owed the musicians of the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra as a result of unilateral cuts imposed by the Society during the 1992-93 season.

from the April 1996 Senza Sordino:

Musicians of the last two professional orchestras in Hawaii have returned to work as of December 27, 1995 as the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra once again. The musicians had been laid off except for some per–service work for Nutcracker and Messiah since mid–September. A contract for the remainder of the 1995-96 season and the 1996-97 season was completed with the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra board. After those negotiations were completed the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra board stepped out of the way to let the Honolulu Symphony Society produce the remainder of the already set–up 95-96 season. The two boards will consolidate into the Honolulu Symphony Society over an as–yet undetermined period of time.

The Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, which was founded after the Honolulu Symphony Society fired all of its musicians in the spring of 1994, never really solidified itself as an institution. From the beginning, everything needed to go right for the new orchestra to survive. Things rarely went right, and the musicians have paid dearly. The State of Hawaii pulled almost $1 million in funding, and the City and County of Honolulu pulled $75,000 in funding for the 95-96 season. Some questionable management buried the orchestra even further. The board was unable to raise money, partially because of their internal problems, and partially because community leaders took a “wait and see” attitude and refused to have anything to do with the new orchestra as long as both the Honolulu Symphony Society and the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra existed.

All this brings the orchestra to where it is today, which is virtually starting over. The contract for the next two years reflects the reality of the situation:

• Year 1: 10 weeks; 4 more weeks contingent on the opening of the Hawaii Theater (a newly renovated theater in Honolulu). Three of the contingent weeks will be paid at a six–services–per–week pro- rated salary, instead of the usual eight services per week.
• Year 2: 18 weeks.

Neither year includes opera, which is negotiated directly with the Hawaii Opera Theater (they have sub-contracted the orchestra from the Symphony Society in the past)....

Still to be dealt with is the issue of the back pay owed the musicians by the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra (this amounts to a minimum of $16,000 per full–time musician), over $100,000 in pension payments owed to the AFM-EP, and approximately $250,000 owed to various governmental agencies for payroll taxes withheld but never forwarded to the appropriate agencies by management. The Honolulu Symphony Society has said they will assume no debts of the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra.

The Hawaii Symphony board is in a very poor position to raise any money to cover any of these obligations, and unfortunately the IRS has first say on any assets available to make these payments. The pension payment falls under federal pension law, but it is unclear what kind of enforcement of those laws would occur if the organization dissolved or filed for bankruptcy. The musicians have little hope that all of our back pay will be forthcoming, but we are still working on getting some of it.

Needless to say this is not a good contract for the musicians, but it is the best possible agreement available. We are essentially starting over with the institutional memory in many areas of the management virtually gone. It was clear that if the orchestra did not start with the services on December 27, 1995 that the orchestra would not start up again for a long time.

What's clear from this litany of disaster upon disaster is that the Honolulu Symphony has never had a functioning board of directors, or at least not for long enough to make a difference. A lack of support from local and state government hasn't helped; both have pulled the plug on funding and venues on multiple occasions in ways that have made it very hard for even a competent management (on those infrequent occasions when the HSO has had one) to run an orchestra responsibly.

But the key deficit is one of governance. Some poor choices of music directors (although the current MD was, to my mind, a very good choice) and some clearly disastrous choices for staff leadership all point to that. But the continued turmoil in labor relations and the string of broken promises to the musicians are not only heartbreaking, but are the invariably accurate "tells" about the quality of the board.

If I was king for a day, I would bar any orchestra from hiring musicians which could not demonstrate adequate and sustained strength in board leadership, recruitment, and self-evaluation to allow the board to keep its promises and fulfill its fiduciary responsibilities to the community as stewards of the institution. Too many musicians' lives have been ruined in too many places by the actions of "boards" such as those inflicted upon the musicians of the Honolulu Symphony.

Boards, staffs, and musicians are all regarded by those who create the jargon for our field as "stakeholders." But the stakes they hold are profoundly different. When board members fail, they walk away, a little embarrassed perhaps, but at least without the burdensome chore of having to raise, or donate, money for the institution they've failed. When staff members fail, or when their boards fail, they are unemployed, but generally have skills that are marketable in other non-profit industries.

But, when board members or staffs fail, musicians' careers, and livelihoods, die.

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.

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.

Why one should go to every single service

…aside from that’s how to get paid, of course.

I missed the rehearsal last Thursday afternoon on account of having to leave town for a day. So of course that was the rehearsal that my colleagues will be talking about for the next decade or so.

On the agenda was the Chopin first concerto with a Canadian pianist by the name of Louis Lortie. The conductor was Vasily Petrenko, our guest for the week. The only thing out of the ordinary was the orchestral accompaniment.

A few years ago we commissioned Paul Chihara to re-arrange the accompaniment for a performance we did with Bill Wolfram. As most orchestra musicians know, Chopin’s version is massively tedious to play (and, to my mind, to listen to as well). He only wrote a handful of works for anything except solo piano, so it’s not surprising that his writing for orchestra is undistinguished. I remember the Chihara version (which changes not a note in the piano part, by the way) as an improvement, at least from the point of view of getting from one end to the other without dying either of boredom or of pain.

Back to Thursday. It was an open rehearsal, with a number of donors invited to attend. As well, Paul Chihara was in the audience, having flown in from LA for the occasion. The rehearsal began with a run-through of the first movement. Things began to go off the rails when  Lortie stood up after the first movement and told the orchestra: “I have an announcement.”

Indeed he did. Reportedly, his announcement (delivered, I’m told, in a very accusatory tone at a group of people whose only sin was to play what was on their stands) was that he, Louis Lortie, had been engaged to perform the Chopin first concerto, that this was not the Chopin first concerto, that we (!?) were free to find another pianist to play what was not the Chopin first concerto, but that, if we (!?) were to do that, of course we (!?) would still have to pay him. He also made it clear that he was not aware in advance that we (!?)  were not going to be doing the Chopin first concerto. Petrenko, rather surprised at this turn of events, suggested the orchestra take a break.

When the orchestra returned, there was a different set of parts on the stand, Chihara had headed back to the airport, and the principal strings had a homework bowing assignment to occupy their previously free evening.

I am told that his assertion that he was unaware that we (!?)  were not doing the Chopin first concerto was not entirely accurate, although it does appear that he was not aware of the existence of the Chihara arrangement until his arrival in Milwaukee.

I can understand why someone might object to an alternate version of the accompaniment of a concerto that he/she was engaged to perform. It shows a certain insensitivity to the suffering of others to insist on the original Chopin parts, but I don't expect pianists to get that playing a string instrument can hurt.

What I can’t understand is choosing to make a fuss about it in front of the orchestra’s donors, or blaming the whole thing on the orchestra. Did he think that he was on tour with Orpheus? Did he think that the money to pay his fee was coming from the Society for the Preservation of Lousy Original Orchestrations rather than from the people who were out in the hall listening? Did he think that the number of orchestras looking for piano soloists is greater than the number of piano soloists looking for orchestras? Did he think he was living in pianist nirvana?

It sounded very reminiscent of the old joke (slightly re-worked for this occasion): what’s the difference between God and a piano soloist? God doesn’t think he can play the piano.

You're great; get lost

It was inevitable that what’s left of the Columbus Symphony board was going to fire their music director. It happened yesterday:

Hirokami, a native of Japan, took over the baton in June 2006 and had one year remaining on his contract. He was openly critical of the symphony board during labor negotiations with musicians in the last year. The contract dispute led the symphony to suspend operations for almost five months before reaching an agreement in September.

"We acknowledge the wonderful artistry and talent Mr. Hirokami possesses and that was reflected in his concerts over the last two seasons," said Martin Inglis, chair of the Columbus Symphony board. "However, as we move forward into the new season, we have agreed with Mr. Hirokami that we will do so under the leadership of a new music director."

Inglis, whose term as chairman began last month, said the symphony is searching for a replacement.

In a letter received by the board and musicians today, Hirokami said he was dismissed by the symphony.

"It is with sadness and with the best wishes to the orchestra that I hereby accept my dismissal request," Hirokami wrote.

Inglis said he wouldn't characterize Hirokami's departure as a firing.

"Junichi managed to polarize a lot of people in the community," Inglis said. "He was a fantastic talent but the board felt perhaps it would be better if we started fresh."

Given the board’s rather casual attitude towards its contract with the orchestra, it’s hardly surprising that they would neither honor their contract with the music director nor be honest about doing so.

So I’ll be honest for them. They fired him because he spoke out against their plans to alter the orchestra out of all recognition and against the board’s abrogation of its implicit agreement with him to maintain a quality orchestra in Columbus. He certainly didn’t come to Columbus to conduct the kind of orchestra that would have been left had the board’s plan been implemented. They fired him because he came out on the side of artistic quality - a position that he could excusably have thought that they'd hired him to uphold.

If the board wants to “start fresh” (and I agree that they need to), they might look at removing the guy that actually runs the orchestra on a day-to-day basis, Tony Beadle. If the criteria for termination is having “managed to polarize a lot of people in the community,” that’s a threshold that he crossed a lot earlier, and far more often, than the music director.

After having very publicly fired their music director for having protested against trying to gut the orchestra, I wonder who the board thinks will agree to take his place? The world is full of conductors looking for music director jobs, of course. But ones on the level of Hirokami are few and far between. Good luck in convincing someone to work for a board that just fired the last guy for being as honest as he was competent.