The Baltimore symphony orchestra gives back

The Baltimore symphony orchestra gives back

Posted on May 1st, 2009 by Christopher Guerin

In 30 years of watching the symphony orchestra business, I’ve never seen anything quite as remarkable as the recent story in the Washington Post describing a voluntary concession, nay “donation”, of wage and benefit reductions totaling $1 million offered by the musicians of the Baltimore Symphony. Orchestra management was actually taken by surprise by the news.

The reductions in salary and pension appear to be in part, perhaps largely, the foregoing of anticipated and contractually guaranteed raises, which would have taken effect next season, but that’s a quibble. The hallowed tradition in this country is for musicians to threaten a strike until their demands are met, and then, when the orchestra falls into deep financial distress, to agree to wage and benefit concessions, which usually have to be restored in subsequent years, what is called a “back-loaded agreement”.

As a consequence, over the last twenty years more than a few orchestras in this country, including the BSO, have been on a see-saw of financial near-death experience followed by a temporary restoration of fragile financial tenuousness. Not a pretty sight to behold.

The Baltimore situation is remarkable in a number of ways. That the players agreed to do this without the prodding or threats of management is a testament not only to the constructive relationship between orchestra and management mentioned in the article, but indicates a realization on the part of the players that we are living in different times and that the old labor/management game is no longer in anyone’s best interests.

The players were also smart to offer the concessions in the form of a “challenge”, making them conditional upon the raising of matching funds. And bravo to their new Music Director Marin Alsop for putting up $50,000 early on toward that match; pretty remarkable, given the fact that the orchestra didn’t treat her hiring by the board of directors with a lot of enthusiasm. Maybe all is well on that front. She’s a fine conductor and those who were less than respectful perhaps realize that by now.

So, here’s to at least one orchestra that has embraced the idea that each musician is responsible not only for the music, but for the stability of the organization for which they play. I could have said, “by which they are employed,” but orchestras are nothing like for-profit businesses, even if they are unionized like GM or the NBA.

Musicians “earn a living” making art for an audience that isn’t willing to pay what it really costs to present, so the balance of every orchestra’s budget must be raised by other means, mostly donations, through the efforts of board and staff members, and volunteers. Not a great business model.

They work no more than 20 hours a week (one of the holy writs of the industry), though they’re expected to be prepared for every rehearsal or performance (more often than not, they are), and most of them use their free time to teach and play “gigs” of one sort or another. Compare them to, say, the large majority of poets or novelists who must pay the bills through other or indirectly related work, teaching if they’re lucky. (I still have the first and only $5 check I ever got for writing.)

Symphony orchestra musicians are indeed a privileged group, and it’s great to see that those of the BSO understand that fact.

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Christopher Guerin

Christopher Guerin is the author of two books each of poetry and short fiction, a novel, and more than a dozen children’s books. If he hadn’t spent 26 years as an arts administrator, including 20 years as President of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, perhaps he’d have worked a little harder getting them published. His consolation resides in his fiction and poems having been published in numerous small magazines, including Rosebud, AURA, Williams and Mary Review, Midwest Quarterly, Wittenberg Review, RE: Artes Liberales, DEROS, Wind, and Wind less Orchard. His blog, Zealotry of Guerin, features his fiction and poetry, including his sonnet sequence of poems after paintings, “Brushwork." He is the V.P. of Corporate Communications at Sweetwater Sound, Inc., the national music instrument retailer.