Posted by Barry Guerrero on May 05, 2003 at 15:50:22:
In Reply to: Saving orchestras posted by David Mills on May 04, 2003 at 22:28:15:
I'm not sure I understand the part about the music director living in the same city as where the orchestra is located. As long as the director can still dedicate enough time and energy to the local orchestra, I'm not sure I can see what the difference is. Isn't perfectly within their right to live somewhere else? Many of them have multiple posts going on anyway.
As for the union part, that seems somewhat obvious. But orchestras often times fall in to more complex scenarios, such what has just recently happened at American Airlines. Why should musicians continually except the idea that they're overpaid, yet conductors seldom volunteer to take a cut themselves? That's not to mention anything about the people who manage the symphonies. Yes, it can easily be argued that AA's pilots were being paid an exhorbitant amount - something that management at AA probably agreed mostly to, in order to stay away from on-stike situations. But it's the pilots who fly the planes, and the musicians who play the music. Yes, it's true that there are a ton of upcoming pilots, and upcoming musicians out there. Anybody would rather fly a plane, or play in a symphony orchestra than to have to go work in warehouse, or some such thing. Yes, it can be looked at as purely a supply/demand type scenario. But the musicians are also under a tremendous amount of pressure to play perfectly each and every time they go out. I, for one, would not want to compromise THAT being the case. I want the best people for the jobs, and that includes, for me anyway, the people who fly the planes. I don't care for the, "it's only a bus in the sky" mentality. When something goes wrong, there's no such thing as an overpaid pilot unless they fail.
In this day and age, when things go right, all the glory gets dumped on the CEO. So much so, that when things go terribly wrong, they still receive big bonuses and golden parachutes anyway. Why would any sensible corporation agree to such nonsense? Why is it that pilots and musicians are considered so expendable and replaceable, but not the executives and CEO's? Then again, we live in an age where waging war is making peace; invasion is liberation; tax cuts that do little for the middle man, somehow stimulate the economy; double speak is considered perfectly logical; American schools are considered over-pampered, and our students expendable - all in the name of NOT raising terrorists somewhere else in the world. Why not just say that blue is red, and green is violet - that north is south, and that putting price stickers on the back of a CD makes more sense than putting it on the front (Tower)? For me, this world becomes more Orwellian by the minute. I digress.
Barry Guerrero