The musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra have delayed yesterday’s scheduled vote on their new contract agreement, with some musicians saying they felt “rushed” by the process. Another musicians-only meeting is scheduled for today, and the committee that negotiated the deal is still confident that they can resolve and outstanding questions surrounding the contract.
Tag: 11.19.04
Pittsburgh Symphony Salaries To Take Huge Leap
The Pittsburgh Symphony has not been on the radar screen of those watching orchestral negotiations this year, which makes sense, since the PSO’s contract won’t expire until fall 2006. But the musicians of Pittsburgh have been watching the contract battles quite closely, because their own deal contains an unusual clause, under which they will be rewarded for their willingness to take recent pay cuts with a whopping 23% raise in the final year of their current contract. That figure comes from calculating the average of the pay scales of the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestra, and will take the Pittsburgh scale to $102,403.
A Match Made In Balanchine Heaven
Peter Boal may have George Balanchine to thank for his new job as artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet. While Boal has never led a company before, he is known for his devotion to the choreographer, which meshes well with PNB’s tradition. “One of the things that attracted Boal to PNB was its strong commitment to Balanchine. His ballets constitute about a third of its repertory, the largest commitment of a major company outside New York City Ballet.”
Well, It Beats Dragging Them Into The Street By Their Ears
A New York theater is trying a new technique to get audience members to turn off their rage-inducing cell phones. Staffers at the Brooks Atkinson Theater noticed that the public had become fairly immune to a simple prerecorded announcement asking for the phones to be shut down, so just before curtain, they’ve begun playing an obnoxious recording of cell phone rings so realistic that people all over the house dive for their phones in horror. “And so a new front may have been opened in the long, hard war against the rude and the clueless… With some of those people, polite appeals are a waste of time.”
The H.L. Mencken Of The Opera World
Sir Jonathan Miller may be English opera’s greatest curmudgeon, and at 70, he clearly doesn’t feel that he has a lot to lose by criticizing his colleagues in the industry. With only a bit of prodding, Miller reveals that, in his view, Joe Volpe is little better than a Jersey mob boss, critics are “midgets talking into a loudspeaker,” and the well-heeled opera fans who crowd Covent Garden on a weekly basis are “chalk-striped aubergines” who don’t know the first thing about great art. Miller can afford to say these things, apparently, because he believes that he will never again work in opera.
Who Needs Schools When We Have Peter Gabriel?
Say what you want about the superiority of classical music or the complex intricacies of jazz, but according to novelist Dave Eggers, there’s simply nothing like good old-fashioned American pop music to get the creative juices flowing and make you smarter. “Like many citizens, I think a regular regimen of intense listening to the more literary or even pretentious songwriters should replace standard education… Music-as-learning-tool combines the three most potent sources of persuasion: a trusted voice, sublimity and endless repetition.”