Minnesota Orchestra Lockout Goes "Fargo"

Music Director Ösmo Vänskä threatens to walk.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

"Whaddya mean we're not going to New York?" Steve Buscemi as Carl Showalter in Fargo.
Image © 1996 MGM.

The overwhelming silence that has settled over the Minnesota Orchestra, locked out since September, broke earlier this week, as music director Ösmo Vänskä threatened to resign.

Lockout Looms at Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

Musicians, management throw down over budget cuts.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Labor issues are heating up in Atlanta.
Image from Gone With the Wind © 1939 MGM.

The plague of cutbacks and labor unrest that has visited orchestras across North America has now made its way south. At the Woodruff Center for the Arts in Atlanta, GA, an ugly confrontation is brewing between the Board of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the musicians of that ensemble.

In an August 9 letter to the Board of Directors of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, members of the orchestra's Players' Association outline a proposed 26% cut in total musicians' expenses, a pay cut of $20,000 per musician, and a reduction in orchestra size from 95 members to 89.

The letter furthermore delineates the Board's threat to "lock out the orchestra and cancel our health and dental insurance" if the above conditions are not agreed to. It is added that the Board's decision comes in conjunction with the decision to start the 2012-2013 season in October, (which is apparently weeks later than usual), after the expiration of the players' current contract.

Brother, Can You Spare $250,000?

City Opera seeks help to balance its budget.

A certain economy informs costume design at
the new City Opera. Image by Wacky Clip Art. 

by Paul Pelkonen
Despite reducing costs by cutting the expense of cutting orchestra, chorus and residency at Lincoln Center, the New York City Opera is still facing financial problems.

In a letter sent to the author's personal mailbox, City Opera general manager George Steel is soliciting donations of $250 in an effort to help his troubled opera company balance its budget for the fiscal year. The letter mentioned a fund-raising goal of $250,000

In the past calendar year, Mr. Steel has made headlines on this blog and elsewhere. The company moved out of its Lincoln Center home at the former New York State Theater, citing the high cost of using the facility. Then, City Opera cut its schedule to four operas and a total of just 16 performances.

Over the winter months, engaged in a messy dispute with Musicians Local 802 and the American Guild of Musical Artists, the unions that represent the company's orchestra and chorus. That dispute was resolved in January in an eleventh-hour compromise that favored the opera company.