I received the following press release via email:

In regard to this announcement:
http://www.bizjournals.com/lou...ptember-october.html

The Louisville Orchestra, Inc. has issued a new press release that takes its spinning of untruths to new lows while dealing a sucker punch to the public as well as its musicians by cancelling the first two months of the Louisville Orchestra’s 75th Season less than two days before a mediation session being convened this Friday by the Mayor of Louisville. Contrary to LO management’s fanciful assertions, Louisville Orchestra musicians do want to work and do want to present a season – and we've been negotiating to get a fair contract and go to work at the beginning of the season in early September. We've been met with diminishing offers from LOI at every step. Now we are working through a trusted city mediator who is trying to get the parties to a resolve.


Instead, today, without notice, without even a phone call, management just canceled the first two months of the season --seventeen performances, including our Fanfare and the Kentucky Opera. These performances are really important to our season subscribers, and now they're gone. They're important to Louisville. It deprives us of work, it deprives our fans of the music that feeds all of our souls, and it destroys the organization's standing in the community. Management is trying to make it look like there is a strike by blaming the AFM for musicians "refusing to work." There is no strike! The LO, Inc. canceled the work: if anything, it’s a lockout.


Louisville Orchestra musicians want to work. But we can't work part-time. Mr. Birman claims to offer employing 71 musicians. The reality of the offer is for only 40 musicians to have 30 weeks’ employment at $925 per week (which as it isn’t truly “full-time”), for 18 musicians to have 20 weeks at the same weekly rate, and for 13 musicians to have only 10 weeks of work. This is not full-time work for a full-time orchestra, and it doesn’t work for presenting a season of symphonic performances. We aren't part-timers, and though it may seem odd, we literally can't take other part-time jobs. Orchestra work comes at irregular times- mornings, afternoons, evenings, nights, and weekends. No one week is the same as another, so we can't pick up other regular, part-time work. We can only do one job, playing our instruments, and that job has to be enough to pay the bills. We'd work tomorrow for the same as we had last year and under the same contract, but management won't allow that. It erroneously believes that it can successfully starve its musicians into submission and deliver to the community a far inferior product – and yet maintain its position artistically and financially. Give us a chance to work now for what we had, and we'll keep negotiating for the future.


Musicians didn't cancel these fall concerts --- we couldn't. Management did -- only it controls the schedule. This is hard on our fans, and we don't blame them for being upset. We're upset, too. It is not a decision we made, or would ever have made. Since LO management put the season in jeopardy, we ask the people of Louisville to step in to help, to speak up.


Louisville is an arts town, but won't continue to be an arts town without an orchestra - a real orchestra, of the high caliber that has earned Louisville a worldwide reputation. There's still time to fix this before management does any further damage. We'll work; just give us some concerts to play, and a living wage.

My good friend, a viola player, was a runner up at their auditions last year...Guess he won by not winning it.

quote:

Originally posted by ClefChef:
My good friend, a viola player, was a runner up at their auditions last year...Guess he won by not winning it.

I don't think anybody wins in this situation except maybe upper executive management who continue to collect a paycheck when the primary product is locked out on the sidelines.

Has anyone actually stopped and really thought out why classical orchestras are fighting for their lives? I think symphony orchestras, as we know them, are soon to be history. Somehow we
have to change with the times. We're beating a dead horse. It's higly unfortyunate, but quite real.