First Abuse From The Podium, And Now…

Judging by the comments appended to Sarah’s post back on May 12, a lot of you were horrified when audio surfaced of conductor Anshel Brusilow brutally dressing down the musicians of the Richardson (TX) Symphony Orchestra during a rehearsal. One musician being singled out by Brusilow for his organizing efforts on behalf of the musicians quit on the spot. You may also recall that the grave sin that the musicians had committed to inspire this spittle-flecked rant from the podium was to pass out leaflets to audience members noting that the RSO’s management hadn’t been paying them anywhere close to on time for two full years.

Anyway, where there’s a spittle-flecked rant that someone thought to record, there’s probably a lot more dissatisfaction bubbling beneath the surface. One of the commenters on Sarah’s original post asked, “Where is the management in all this?” Someone else asked, “Where is the board?” This week, we got an answer to that, as the RSO’s management and board quite dramatically declared war on the musicians of the orchestra, who, as I noted back in May, make an average of $2625 per year from the RSO. (When they’re paid at all.)

Prolific orchestra blogger Drew McManus has a lot more detail than I’m going to go into here, so click on over to Adaptistration if you want the full story, but in a nutshell, here’s how it went down: the musicians were summoned to a meeting that was supposed to be to discuss “structural changes” to the orchestra’s operations. When they arrived, the representatives of the musicians’ union, the AFM, were barred from the meeting by a sheriff’s deputy and the Dallas Police. (I’m pretty sure this would actually have been illegal in Minnesota, but Texas is one of them so-called “right to work” states, which basically means “no right to a union.”) The musicians were then summarily told that their union would no longer be recognized, and the RSO would refuse to negotiate any new collective bargaining agreement with its musicians under any circumstances.

The union has responded by placing the RSO on the “Unfair List,” which basically means that union musicians (which is to say most of us) are strongly discouraged from accepting gigs there. A lot of non-union players also don’t take gigs with Unfair List-ed bands, because it’s not a designation that’s handed down lightly, and it’s usually a pretty strong sign of a very unpleasant working environment. Presumably, the entire complement of the RSO’s musicians will not be back, which is exactly what their management and board seem to want, anyway. Essentially, the orchestra’s leaders have decided that the people who actually play the music are so expendable, so dime a dozen, that there’s no harm in just blowing the entire organization up and starting fresh with, presumably, musicians who don’t mind not getting paid for months at a stretch and being shrieked at by an overpaid, washed-up has-been of a conductor.

It honestly takes a lot to get me worked up about union-management disputes in the orchestra business. On the whole, I’m glad to be in a union, but I also have a lot of philosophical disagreements with those who think musicians should always be in lock-step on every issue simply because we are unionized. I’ve never understood the attitude from some musicians that anyone working in management is automatically the enemy, but I’ve also known more than one orchestra manager or board member who treated musicians like hired help, thus encouraging such animosity. I feel very fortunate to play in an orchestra that gets amazing support from our board members, but I remember what it was like to play in an ensemble where that wasn’t the case.

I like to think I’m pretty fair-minded, is what I’m saying here, and that’s why you don’t see me writing a whole lot about labor disputes that I don’t have a stake in. But this RSO thing… this might be the most chilling, heartless, mean-spirited display of executive and board incompetence that I’ve ever seen in the music industry. Yeah, it’s on a small scale – it’s not like the RSO is the Boston Symphony or anything. But these are real people, with real careers, cobbling together a modest income by playing as many gigs as they can find, driving all over creation to play for any audience that will have them. And now they’re being kicked to the curb as if they did something wrong, and being told that their oh-so-extravagant $2625 salaries are just too greedy for today’s world.

Back when Sarah linked to Brusilow’s petty little rant, I hoped it was an anomaly, a momentary lapse of self-control that didn’t really reflect how bad things might be in Richardson, Texas. But now we know the truth: the RSO’s music director, its managers, and its board well and truly deserve each other.