tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post6004010113866019344..comments2023-11-03T09:05:31.265-04:00Comments on Soho the Dog: He went through wild ecstatics when I showed him my lymphaticsMatthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10936327293692397100noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-70965353667809765122011-05-16T12:49:45.931-04:002011-05-16T12:49:45.931-04:00The musicians offered a $14 million give-back? Tha...The musicians offered a $14 million give-back? That would take care of a great deal of the orchestra's claimed shortfall - it is truly astounding that management didn't take it. We are clearly into managerial-incompetence territory.Lisa Hirschhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14014924958428072675noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-33491197149720118012011-05-16T12:20:55.490-04:002011-05-16T12:20:55.490-04:00Klacknermusic: Salaries are an interesting part of...Klacknermusic: Salaries are an interesting part of this whole cost-disease thing—and it's certainly one that the musicians are aware of. Browse the ICSOM <a href="http://www.icsom.org/settlement.html" rel="nofollow">recent settlements</a> and one can find plenty of freezes and givebacks—some more voluntary than others. (One can also find a number of orchestras whose pay scale seems to be still on a healthy course of nominal but steady raises.) One of the most intriguing little news bits from the Philadelphia situation that I saw was that the musicians <a href="http://www.wqxr.org/articles/wqxr-features/2011/apr/16/philadelphia-orchestra-votes-bankruptcy/" rel="nofollow">reportedly offered</a> $14 million in concessions which the board didn't take. <i>Hmmm.</i> That reinforces my gut feeling that, while drastic cuts do become necessary for some organizations, it tends to reflect more on the competence of board and management than on the level of pay.<br /><br />The idea of the cost-disease cuts both ways on salaries. On the one hand, salaries <i>are</i> the main costs of running an orchestra, so if the disease seems rabid, it's a common place to look for cuts. But in this model, pay cuts are <i>always only a temporary fix</i>. Sooner or later, even those reduced salaries are going to creep back up to keep up with inflation, <i>&c.</i>. If you buy into the cost-disease, salary cuts are just kicking the can down the road.<br /><br /><i>I'm really torn as to whether or not I can swing for tickets (especially in a brand new concert hall)</i><br /><br />Exactly. It's much easier to run an orchestra when the economy's humming. I still think that is the most important factor in this whole question—and it's one that's cyclical, not structural.Matthewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10936327293692397100noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-74484244061076023782011-05-15T00:25:08.085-04:002011-05-15T00:25:08.085-04:00Hi Matthew, Nice blog! How to add the Glitter Effe...Hi Matthew, Nice blog! <a href="http://hapiblogging.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-to-add-glitter-effect-mouse-pointer.html" rel="nofollow">How to add the Glitter Effect Mouse Pointer to your Blog</a>hapihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12643951037231861939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-32732059340998122842011-05-11T11:39:13.948-04:002011-05-11T11:39:13.948-04:00Regarding salaries, it would be interesting to loo...Regarding salaries, it would be interesting to look at the salaries of comparably-educated professionals in Detroit and see how they're paid. <br /><br />But I see these problems as largely the fault of the board and the administrators: the musicians are paid to play, the administrators are paid to support the artistic mission of the orchestra. Is anyone complaining about how the musicians did <i>their</i> jobs??Lisa Hirschhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14014924958428072675noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-45658330730317365812011-05-11T10:44:12.590-04:002011-05-11T10:44:12.590-04:00Mr. Guerrieri,
I wonder what ypur thoughts are o...Mr. Guerrieri,<br /> <br />I wonder what ypur thoughts are on musician salaries as it relates to this is-it-real-or-is-it-not-so-much crisis. It is quite common knowledge here in America that sacrifice is not in the vocabulary for most people, from the environment to health care and Social Security. <br /> <br />Of all the points raised on this issue, I think yours about the income gap and continued squeeze on the middle-class is the most salient; speaking for myself, I'm really torn as to whether or not I can swing for tickets (especially in a brand new concert hall).<br /> <br />But if the situation is as dire as the folks in Philadelphia, Louisville, Detroit, etc. would like us to believe, is it simply too Draconian to cut salaries? For everyone? Over a period of years?<br /> <br />I was busy annoying many people during the Detroit strike that even with the massive cut in pay the orchestra agreed to, they are still very well-paid relative to their location. I understand that people purchase homes, vehicles, have families based on their income levels, but couldn't these cuts happen over periods of a decade or more, plowing through the endowments significantly less quickly?<br /> <br />I don't know if it is actually necessary to go down that road...but if these boards keep insisting that it is a problem, it doesn't seem like there will be a choice. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-48765827193756502512011-05-10T22:48:44.060-04:002011-05-10T22:48:44.060-04:00Great article!Great article!rkamperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07451364526769649378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-72576236879989359802011-05-10T22:25:32.105-04:002011-05-10T22:25:32.105-04:00"Alex over at Wellsung took exception, on the..."Alex over at Wellsung took exception, on the eminently reasonable grounds that reports of the impending death of orchestras have been around for an awfully long time, and have invariably proved to be exaggerated."<br /><br />It doesn't feel invariable through this lens, since, as a young person, some of our family friends were in the Alabama Symphony Orchestra when it was disbanded, and Birmingham is a city with a relatively deep artistic soul. The orchestra did come back online after a few years.dwnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18438828428376763273noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-22746046078449229342011-05-10T20:50:43.852-04:002011-05-10T20:50:43.852-04:00Evan: Regular reader as well! You'll be happy ...Evan: Regular reader as well! You'll be happy to know that at least ten of my twenty favorite movies made your "Movies Everybody Loves But Me" list. (Kubrick and Kurosawa get me into my misanthropic happy place, what can I say.)<br /><br />There's an argument to be made that the circumstances under which orchestras used to run deficits is sufficiently different to resist comparison (I wouldn't make that argument, but I can imagine it being made), but the BSO, at least, really was still running deficits even after they matured into a stable institution. I should have gone into more depth: according to DeWolfe Howe, "It ought to be recorded that [BSO] deficits, varying in amount, have had to be met every year." (That's up through 1931.) When Higginson died, the trustees called on a "number of anonymous guarantors" to bridge the gap and made moves to shore up the endowment, since the deficits continued. A couple weeks ago, I linked to a Howard Taubman piece from the late-1940s <i>New York Times</i> that found deficits across the board in a survey of orchestras and opera companies. I think it's fair to say that structural deficits have been a part of permanent civic-treasure American orchestras from the start. Maybe it's somewhat camouflaged because of the practice in the old days of relying on a handful of rich patrons to make up the difference (or to provide an adequate endowment from the start), rather than the modern wide-net development practice.<br /><br />I always try and leave open the possibility of history breaking off from its previous patterns, but if it really <i>is</i> different this time (and I've heard that enough times in my life about enough different things to be cheerfully skeptical about it), I would be more inclined to chalk it up to the combination of the severity of the last downturn and the unprecedented income inequality/middle-class wage stagnation that was already in place. Performing arts organizations feel the squeeze from <i>that</i> because middle-class consumers have less disposable income, while upper-class consumers are fewer in number. Which means that the idea that general rising affluence will transfer over to the arts (Baumol's original out) actually doesn't happen.<br /><br />So I guess that, while I would not exactly call myself an optimist on the fates of orchestras, my pessimism is far more bound up in my pessimism as to the general oligarchichal tendency of American political economy rather than anything inherent to the set-up of an orchestra. But, like I said, for me, this is part of the fun of thinking about the cost-disease. For instance: Higginson's $50,000 deficit, adjusted for inflation, works out to a contemporary equivalent of just over a million dollars a year. Certainly there are numbers bigger than that floating around—the Philadelphia board, for instance, was tossing around a $14 million figure. How much of that is the cost-disease—and how much of it is board complacency? Shouldn't the overall growth in wealth be enough to offset the cost-disease? If not, why not? And then you're into talking about the really big questions about inequality and corporate influence and regulatory capture and the fates of capitalistic societies.<br /><br />And I should note that, even by classical-music standards, orchestras are still pretty peculiar institutions, which is a big reason I strongly resist amplifying their situations into any larger statements about the health/relevance/wherewithal of classical music in general.Matthewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10936327293692397100noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-20121048466411994932011-05-10T16:57:19.965-04:002011-05-10T16:57:19.965-04:00Dearest Soho,
I'm a huge fan and regular rea...Dearest Soho, <br /><br />I'm a huge fan and regular reader. Have been for years. So it pains me to say that this argument is straw. Of course there were structural deficits in 1881. That was the first year of the BSO's existence. Many, perhaps most, performing arts organizations can't survive the first few years precisely because of structural deficits. You touch on that in this, but you don't follow that thought to its inevitable conclusion. The argument could be much more compelling if you found similar deficits in the Koussevitsky/Munch years. I doubt one could though, even during World War II. <br /><br />Yes, the hand wringing has existed from time immemorial. But this time, it's really different. In this economic period, what PR help does it give corporations or rich people to underwrite organizations that are right or wrongly seen as elitist playgrounds? What chance do the 'arts' have when public schools don't have enough money for computers or books?<br /><br />It is not alarmism to say that this is unsustainable. The burden of proof is on the optimists, not on the hand-wringers. They're the ones who are being cautious enough to not assume that money will consistently materialize from the ether. When organizations subside on private donations, the potential for crisis exists at every moment. But there was always money to bail us out of it. In today's world, we are less certain of where that will come from than in any period of American orchestral history. And how will these organizations keep justifying full-time employment with benefits if the money doesn't keep rolling in.<br /><br />Your Faithful Reader,<br /><br />EvanEvan Tuckerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-21917149680911122452011-05-10T16:05:50.400-04:002011-05-10T16:05:50.400-04:00I have linked to this, which is great.I have linked to this, which is great.Lisa Hirschhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14014924958428072675noreply@blogger.com