Lockouts, Strikes and Shutdowns: a Very Bad Week for Musicians

October 2, 2013 at 9:40 PM

Photo by Eric Kabik

Here are some of my thoughts on this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.

On Tuesday in Minnesota, conductor Osmo Vänskä resigned from the Minnesota Orchestra, followed quickly by the resignation of Aaron Jay Kernis, founder and director of the orchestra's Composer Institute.

It was a huge blow to the orchestra musicians, whose ranks have been getting thinner and thinner as musicians seek work in other cities. The picture below illustrates who has left the orchestra -- and that has usually meant they have left the community. The picture gets more ghostly every time I visit the Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra Facebook page.

Looks like they're going to have to get the Wite-Out again to erase one more from their community: their conductor.

I asked v.com member Emily Hogstad if she'd like to bring us up to speed about it -- she lives in Minnesota and has been writing passionately about the situation (and accurately, I was told by a Minnesota defector who had served on the negotiating committee). But she was having a hard time with this bitter pill, she told me. She admitted, it brought her to tears. That's because the decision to decimate an institution it not a game, it's a decision that has a real and lasting affect on people in the community, not just the players involved.

In this case it's pretty clear that Minnesota Orchestra management was going for a union bust and absolutely did not/does not care about the effect this radical "cost-saving measure" of kicking the city's professional musicians to the curb will have on the city's cultural and musical life. It goes far, far beyond lacking a basic respect for the musicians, who are professionals at the top of their game, both physically (yes, playing an instrument at that level requires astonishing physical dexterity) and intellectually. Not only don't they respect them, they seem to feel they are easily replaced with cheaper labor.

A symphony is considered an "institution" for a reason: it serves as a center of gravity for the musical life of a city. It allows symphony patrons can come to hear live music, yes. But it's a lot more. The symphony allows history gets a hearing. It also has the capacity to try a broad range of musical experiments, to reach out to new frontiers. It can help a community celebrate an event; it represents the city's culture to the rest of the world. It brings community together for the sake of music -- everyone together in the hall, whether it's the Friday night subscribers or busloads of children from all over the city who sit together to hear music unfold.

The very existence of that group of incredibly talented musicians and their leader has a profound affect on its community. Musicians teach music lessons to children in their community, they lead workshops and help with the youth orchestra. They also talk to adults: they fan the passions of amateurs, they help everyone who touches them see a little something new about music in the world.

Yes, you pay the musicians you employ, you allow them to have a life in your community. And no, you won't easily replace them. When you tear down a tree that has been standing for 110 years, do you expect to plant a replacement that will immediately have the majesty, strength, size, history in the community, and frankly the love and recognition that the old one had?

Ain't gonna happen!

As for tonight's cancelled Joshua Bell concert that would have opened the season for Carnegie Hall: I haven't found a similarly compelling argument to support labor on that one, though here is their argument. The fact of the matter is that somehow, no one could resolve this in time to prevent the cancellation of a concert that would have both filled the house and brought in a lot of money. (Last year's raised $2.7 million, according to the New York Times).

But it isn't just the money that upsets me. The basic reality is that this great zing of tremendous energy that would have fed New York City's cultural life -- the part of its cultural life that loves and supports violin-playing, Joshua Bell, Esperanza Spalding, symphony music -- just got lobbed into the ether.

It zaps me, too. It's about all I can say. Even from all the way across the country, I feel the fizzle.