 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2016-10-01 05:55
ouch!
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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Author: Clarineteer
Date: 2016-10-01 08:51
I wonder how effective a major symphony orchestra strike is. It is not a transportation system that will wreak havoc on a major city.
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2016-10-01 17:01
Clarineteer, if you have a more effective tool for musicians to bargain with, I'm sure that the members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the Dallas Fort Worth Orchestra would appreciate hearing it.
Just because most people don't attend the symphony doesn't mean that the strike won't affect most of the people who DO attend the symphony.
James
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2016-10-01 17:47
Thank you for the correction, Paul!
James
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2016-10-02 16:45
Offhand, I can't think of another major orchestra strike that wasn't announced until members of the audience had already taken their seats, as just happened in Pittsburgh. The announcement from the stage came about twenty minutes after the concert was scheduled to begin. That tactic certainly gets maximum attention from people directly affected by the strike, but I wonder whether that booming sound is the percussion section practicing or a great big backlash blowing up.
I came back here to correct my error above, after JHowell wrote down below,
>Lelia, please do not confuse Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Here in Pittsburgh, we extended our contract in order to play our opening gala. >
My apologies, and thanks for the correction.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2016-10-06 19:17)
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-10-02 17:17
There doesn't seem to be a backlash among subscribers or single ticket holders - they've been promised refunds or opportunities to trade into other performances and don't seem to have complained to the press about the time they spent getting there. It may be that some who were in the seats (the estimate was about a thousand, which, if true, isn't nearly a full house) actually felt some excitement over being there as it was happening.
Some of the major philanthropists who support the orchestra have been vocal about the strike itself, although the last minute cancellation hasn't been an issue publicly, even with them. They did have their gala banquet, a major fund raiser, preceding the cancelled concert (as it happens, at the same time the unsuccessful last-ditch negotiations were going on elsewhere in the Kimmel Center).
Karl
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-10-02 18:35
Maybe these strikes are about different things, but generally speaking . . . .
Is the problem too few people attending concerts (or buying products) to cover costs, with that being perceived as due to mismanagement? Or is it that there is enough money coming in but it's being split inappropriately, that is, not enough to the musicians? Or are there other issues?
In the case of the Philadelphia Orchestra, where there's been difficulties for some years, mention was made of a hired consultant (Michael Kaiser) who produced a report recommending certain changes. The union mentioned that none of the recommendations have been adopted. Does anyone know what the recommendations were?
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-10-02 19:18
Philip Caron wrote:
> Is the problem too few people attending concerts (or buying
> products) to cover costs, with that being perceived as due to
> mismanagement?
Symphony orchestras have never covered their costs from ticket sales. Empty seats discourage donors, and there have been more empty seats in recent years. How to bring in more audience is, to most of the people involved, a management decision. But the fact is that no one has a real idea how to accomplish it. In any case, empty seats are not the root cause of the orchestra's financial headaches. Shrinking philanthropic income and, not coincidentally, shrinking endowment funds, are.
> Or is it that there is enough money coming in
> but it's being split inappropriately, that is, not enough to
> the musicians? Or are there other issues?
There are in Philadelphia additional issues, among which (I'm certain there are more) are pension fund control and of the number of musicians to be contracted. The orchestra pulled out, at considerable expense, of the AFM pension fund and established its own pension program. Who is controlling that and how it's being administered will probably always be an issue. The bankruptcy settlement included a reduction in total players. I forget the exact numbers, but the upshot has been that retirements are not replaced until another player leaves, Then that player's position is left unfilled until the next player after him or her leaves. Obviously, they aren't leaving principal positions open, but the clarinet section remained at only three players for a couple of seasons after Raoul Querze's retirement. Likewise, a trumpet position was left vacant for a season before that. The parts, when extra players are needed, are covered by players from the sub list at per-service rates.
At the root of most of the arguments is the fear that players may leave for better conditions if opportunities arise, and that replacing those and retiring players with high quality replacements may be more difficult if the pay and conditions aren't competitive with other orchestras of similar stature.
>
> In the case of the Philadelphia Orchestra, where there's been
> difficulties for some years, mention was made of a hired
> consultant (Michael Kaiser) who produced a report recommending
> certain changes. The union mentioned that none of the
> recommendations have been adopted. Does anyone know what the
> recommendations were?
I read a great deal of the report when it came out, although the details have by now evaporated from memory. I'm sure it's available in writing somewhere online. Some of his points touched on the size and composition of the board, ways to increase the size of the endowment funds and long term strategies to solidify them, the expansion into digital and streaming distribution of their concerts, I think expansion of community outreach and partnering with other local arts entities. I don't remember if he dealt with restructuring of the business arrangements among the orchestra, the Kimmel Center, the Academy of Music and the other tenants of each hall.
The upshot of his output, which cost a significant amount of money, has been that the board has tabled it for further study. Since it was part of the promise that got the orchestra members to accept the bankruptcy settlement contract in the first place, the musicians are a bit disgruntled that no action has been taken on the report since it was completed.
There's lots more, and I don't have any special in or a good enough memory of details to be a reliable source, but it's more complicated, as contracts always are, than just salary.
Karl
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-10-03 04:18
I just got an email from the Philadelphia Orchestra subscription department:
"We are pleased to announce that The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and Musicians have reached an agreement on a new three-year contract which restores the Orchestra to its normal concert schedule. Throughout the negotiations process, all participants recognized a shared commitment to assuring that The Philadelphia Orchestra will be maintained for generations to come."
So, one down, Pittsburgh and Fort Worth still to go?
Karl
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Author: Clarineteer
Date: 2016-10-03 08:36
The fact that they were willing to settle so quickly proves that the strike was effective.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2016-10-04 02:10
"The fact that they were willing to settle so quickly proves that the strike was":
a. effective
b. premature
c. pointless
Discuss...
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-10-04 02:41
There are other potential answers than effective/premature/pointless. One word probably won't manage the job. So, it was partly effective, it was either long overdue or should never have happened, and it made different points for pretty much all concerned.
Are these kinds of music organizations going to continue in this country indefinitely? Seems like each succeeding generation has less interest in "classical" music.
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Author: JHowell
Date: 2016-10-06 17:55
Lelia, please do not confuse Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Here in Pittsburgh, we extended our contract in order to play our opening gala. Philadelphia's management was back at the table immediately and the strike was over in two days. Here, management canceled concerts for the entire month of October and has refused to return to negotiation. You can read all about it at http://realpsoupdate.com/
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2016-10-06 20:04
'Are these kinds of music organizations going to continue in this country indefinitely? Seems like each succeeding generation has less interest in "classical" music.'
As long as most of the culture isn't interested in the music, yes. Orchestra boards might be able to do some things about that. The propaganda in the Berlin webcasts talks about a lot of innovative outreach programs, all funded by the Deutsche Bank! Oops. But modern orchestras are the result of great composers re-imagining the orchestra. The kind of excitement necessary in order to change how the culture looks at music probably needs to be generated in significant part by contemporary composers doing the same thing. The musicians and boards need to be open to that kind of thing, but they can't really do it by themselves. And the orchestra great new composers re-imagine would probably look and function a little different from the ones wealthy donors are used to funding.
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2016-10-09 01:04
Philip Caron wrote: "Are these kinds of music organizations going to continue in this country indefinitely? Seems like each succeeding generation has less interest in "classical" music."
dorjepismo responded with "As long as most of the culture isn't interested in the music, yes."
I'm pretty sure we've been down this road before, so, what I'm about to write is certainly not new by any means.
As I look upon the entire picture, to me, it all boils down to "economics" at the "local level". How can a child get any interest in classical music when school music programs are being cut at what seems like an alarming rate due to decreased school funding which usually is a result of decreased tax revenues which, I believe, is due to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country.
In band, there is "exposure" to various instruments and a possible exposure to classical music depending upon the director.
Why does it always seem that band and drama classes are cut first when there is a budget crunch? Personally, I've never really liked history classes. I don't think my future would have been at a severe disadvantage if they decided to eliminate history classes and kept band going instead.
IMO, exposure at an early age is paramount. And, if the parents are not going to do it, then, unfortunately, it appears to fall upon the shoulders of the school systems.
Kudos to Merlin Williams for "exposing" various types of instruments used in bands and orchestras via his YouTube videos.
If the above seems frivolous and not in proper alignment with some of the responses, my apologies.
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-10-09 02:22
Dan, you may be right. It prompted some further reflections.
Growing up, my family liked music, but that didn't extend to classical. I was in band from age 11, but until about age 15 I dismissed the classical genre as boring "church music". Closest I ever got was liking some songs from My Fair Lady.
Then in 9th grade American Studies class, I heard Dvorak's New World Symphony. For me that was transformative. As soon as possible I bought a copy of the same recording, and I wore it out. The performers were Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
I doubt the intent of any of my education was to lead me to love classical music. Band mostly focused on, well, band music, and there was almost no other exposure, save the instance cited just above. Yet, love it I do, and can't imagine any other way I could be.
A friend of mine cleans homes for a living. She does my place every few weeks. Classical music was never any part of her life, and she's had scant interest in any music. Lately when she's here cleaning, I'll put some recording on to play. She often reacts very strongly; Ravel's Bolero seemed to her incredibly intense, and made her heart race; the Arietta of Beethoven's Op. 111 astounded her. Schubert, Bruckner, Glass - she liked them all. (Uh, not Steven Reich, though.) She's always claimed she doesn't get classical music - but she does, she gets it very well.
It's never too late.
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Author: Clarineteer
Date: 2016-10-09 03:48
Every once in a while I meet someone who does not listen to any music at all and i think for me how empty life would be without listening to music.
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2016-10-09 04:35
Philip, I agree with you when you say "It's never too late". I'm not really sure when I first heard Glen Gould play Bach on the piano, but, I was mesmerized. And, when the movie came out about the life of Mozart, I, again, was totally thrilled by what I heard.
Would I pay "big bucks" to hear anyone play an hour of Bach on the piano? Absolutely! Without a doubt! The same for Mozart.
I'm glad you mentioned your cleaning lady. I just got back from shopping and I was thinking about this thread. I, erroneously, came up with the conclusion that true appreciation of classical music was directly connected to the amount of education that a person was fortunate enough to receive. Your cleaning lady story blew that theory right out of the water.
However, I still come back to the same conclusion as to "exposure".
It appears that "classical musical appreciation" is a college level course. Now I ask, "Why is that?" Why can't it be taught in high school or even grammar/middle school? Are the students not "mature" enough?
In the store that I just came from, they played the most raunchy, awful, so called "music" in the background that I felt like running out of the store. I would rather have heard some soft "classical music" playing in the background. Who knows, I probably would have bought more food!
So, IMHO, if classical music is not only going to survive but actually thrive and grow in popularity, various methods of influential exposure will need to be implemented.
We, as taxpayers, should have some sort of leverage as to what is taught in school. However, in the small cowboy town where I live today, that idea probably falls into the wishful thinking category. Many of the parents I have met simply "don't care" about what is being taught in school. However, many years ago when I lived in an affluent town in CT, the parents there were extremely aggressive about the educational system because they wanted their children to go to Harvard, Yale, Brown, etc. So, perhaps, financial status of the parents has a more pronounced influence as to what their children are being exposed to in school.
I don't know...perhaps what is needed are "classical music advocates" whose primary purpose is to try and persuade schools, grocery stores, eating establishments, etc., to change the "background noise to beautiful, soothing, classical music".
Just food for thought...
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2016-10-09 07:15
When I was in junior high, they bussed a bunch of us to an L.A. Phil children's concert. First piece was the Egmont overture, and it absolutely blew me away. After that were a bunch of "kid-friendly" pieces I don't remember and that bored me silly, plus a lot of talk I didn't have the attention span for. Much of the time, even people who don't know anything about music can tell whether what they're hearing really means something, or whether it's mostly fluff. Whatever the musical genre, it's important to give people the great, intense, meaningful stuff, even or especially at the introductory level. A lot of garage bands know this, but a lot of boards of directors sometimes don't seem to.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2016-10-20 19:56
My whole family loved classical music and several people in my mother's side of the family, including my mother, were pro or former pro classical musicians. My dad loved jazz, owned a lot of the great jazz LPs and took me to hear jazz bands playing in San Francisco and Sausalito. So for me, it was "Monkey see, monkey do," almost from birth. Apparently I was trying to belt it out on a Berkeley city bus at the age of about nothing-and-a-half. Probably lucky the other passengers didn't throttle me on the spot.
My tactic with people who aren't into music (yet) is to pop a CD in the machine and say, "Oh, hey, I love this piece, and I'll be you will, too." I don't imply they're ignorant; I just include them. It works.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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