Cincinnati has just promoted one of its percussionists to principal following Bill Platt's retirement. It seems highly unusual for an orchestra today to promote someone rather than hold an audition. I'm assuming that this has to be explained in their CBA?

I'm in no way criticizing the CSO or Mr. Fishlock. He's both a fantastic player and person. I just find this surprising in today's era of 200+ page CBA's and such.

You can find the article HERE

I'm pretty sure many orchestras have provisions in their CBA's to allow a promotion like this (I haven't read the CSO's, so I can't say for sure).

Plus there likely be an audition anyway - for the section position Mr. Fishlock is vacating.

Three thoughts come to mind simultaneously:

(a) it must be allowed in their CBA or they wouldn't be able to do it.
(b) better to at least be straight-up about this than to hold a giant audition that no one else has a chance of winning. (Nothing personal against the CSO, but we've all heard about auditions like that, and I once had an orchestra staff member admit it to me at an audition.)
(c) he must be pretty d**n good or they would be trying to find someone better (or "better").

So congratulations to Mr. Fishlock!

Another great example of this in the percussion world is Andy Reamer in Pittsburgh. Over the years he's been promoted from section, to Associate, to Principal, and deservedly so. Congrats to Mr. Fishlock. Outstanding service should be recognized and rewarded in this way more often.

I have to agree that it's great to hear about an orchestral player being recognized and promoted this way. Congrats to him!

i don't have a problem with this either. It saves both the committee & 'auditioners' from having 2 auditions! It also saves the promoted player from having to reaudition for their own orchestra.

I think it's refreshing to see, in a way. Often times an orchestra would have an audition even if they wanted to place a section member in the principal role, then fill the open section spot from the same audition. It's nice for them to be upfront about it. The orchestra also knows what they're getting this way, too. Dave's played there for a while now and they obviously like his playing. We all know the audition process is inherently flawed to a degree. Just to reiterate, I don't have a problem with it...I just haven't seen that happen in a while.

They should have done this in Sarasota. The Sarasota Orchestra (formerly FLorida West Coast Symphony) had three capable percussionists of which any of them could have moved up and filled the position. They decided to have an audition for principal. They later fired 2 of the percussionists who were there for years.

I believe this was also done, recently, in Pittsburgh as well. Wasn't Andrew Reamer appointed Principal following an internal audition? Given that a Principal Percussionist needs to have strong organizational skills in addition to being a top-notch musician, seems to be that there is a valid argument to be made if an existing member of a section already has both skills. Just my 2 cents.

Frosty the Freelancer