Mark Stryker in the Detroit Free Press highlights a rather unique proposition buried in the proposed new musician contract with the Detroit Symphony. While much of the attention has been on the significant proposed pay cuts to musicians — in the neighborhood of 30 percent — Stryker notes another radical departure from the norm:
Look under the hood of the proposal and you find a controversial redefinition of the job of playing in a major orchestra. Instead of the industry standard of playing only rehearsals and concerts with the orchestra, a job in the DSO would require performing chamber music, teaching, school visits, public speaking, library work or other activities related to musical skills.
The premise is that the symphony and its musicians need to be connected in many more ways to their community — and that concert performances at the highest technical and aesthetic quality are necessary but insufficient to that goal. The other premise is that a concerts-only symphony isn’t solvent anymore, especially in an economically struggling community like Detroit.
Many musicians in the mix feel like their job has been redefined in mid-career. Some came to Detroit specifically to perform at the highest level, for which they require focus on their performance. Others already provide community-based services like lessons and chamber performances, and would rather keep those activities as their own.
Regardless, it’s an extraordinary public conversation on the value of a major cultural organization, and the purpose and focus of its personnel. All eyes of major orchestras are watching, as should be major cultural organizations of any discipline.
Thanks Russell for the link!
Detroit’s world-class arts organizations depended on the USA auto industry: both for corporate donations, and for ticket sales & donations from well-paid white collar executives. For many years, the Michigan Opera Theater fall season was sponsored by Ford, and the spring season was sponsored by General Motors — or maybe it was the other way around.
The 2008 crisis ended the generosity of the car companies: GM and Chrysler were in no condition to be giving money away as they became wards of the government, and Ford ended donations as well to conserve cash in the crisis.
I have no inside insight, but I wonder if the musicians’ union would prefer to accept the dissolution of the Detroit Symphony, rather than accept radical pay cuts which could give ideas to other big-city orchestras. Perhaps that would be for the best: clearing away the existing DSO would allow a new orchestra to be built using much younger and lower-paid musicians, with community outreach built in from the start, and with the goal of being “regional” in quality rather than world-class.
It stinks for the existing musicians, who are going to be unemployed until they can relocate to cities with surviving world-class orchestras.
I don’t want to come across as union-bashing here: I consider myself generally a union supporter, and I am a union member living in Michigan myself. But eventually even the United Auto Workers had to come to accept: in the US auto industry, and in Michigan, There Is No More Money.
The growth of outreach, teaching, and interaction by artists, for me, is symbolic of the next evolution of art marketing. Artists can no longer depend on a single institution or gatekeeper to provide the work.
I don’t know if I’m comfortable with the idea of institutions wanting to take control of classes and outreach on behalf of the musicians. That sounds like less pay for the artists.
If the artists accept those terms, then that’s up to them, but if I were one of those musicians, I’d be looking for a way to do everything in that contract without getting tied down by the Symphony.
I think this is an example of an organization actually listening to what many arts administrators have been talking about for years. Arts organizations must be a reflection of the community and can no longer exist in their bubble and expect the community around them to simply support their “art”. The model Detroit is trying to create is what I believe most orchestras, if not all arts organizations, will look like in the future, an organization centered around its community.
People have been saying the old system is dead/dying for years, and I applaud DSO for actually listening and doing something about it.
I think this is exactly the direction that orchestras need to go. Otherwise, like the auto unions, orchestra musicians will price themselves out of their jobs and their communities won’t care all that much because they had such a limited impact.
That said, I think this is the wrong time for the DSO management to strong-arm their musicians into this radical of a change. The musicians have enough to swallow with a huge pay cut. This kind of paradigm shift should be done in a collaborative fashion (yes, I know that’s easier said than done) to maximize musician buy-in, not imposed upon them in the midst of extremely contentious negotiations (or lack thereof). I completely understand the financial reasons re. why to do it now, but dragging musicians against their will give you grumpy “ambassadors” who won’t be very effective in promoting community goodwill.
I also hope the DSO is planning on providing professional development for its musicians to help them learn how to be effective teachers, public speakers, etc. Some may be naturals, but most people who have spent the majority of their lives alone in a practice room will need some help developing those skills. Badly done “community service” can be worse than none at all.
Symphony musicians have always been, are still, privately active everywhere in the city — in jazz, country, big band, all the music schools, chamber music, youth orchestra instruction, in churches, schools and teaching in local universities and colleges. The more money the local city orchestra pays its musicians, the better musicians the orchestra attracts and the better and more exciting ALL the other musical activities in the city are-especially teaching. The local symphony is the BIG totally unrecognized central employer that sets the standards – and the excitement in the public -for live, performed music. No manager has to rejig that or massage it. As musicians loose pay for performance, the orchestra looses quality and the public loses performance vitality (which is very much a function of expertise) and all the other musical side jobs that musicians do.
Do you know what the Detroit musicians would sound like if they spent most of their time NOT performing in the community? They would sound like my city’s orchestra rehearsing at night after work, with wrong notes, out of tune, tired out after a hard work day, not having seen their own families enough for their good, the music unprepared, and without professional ambition or — eventually — full understanding of the language of the music they are working on to perform. But that’s another topic.
What people aren’t aware of about the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is that a strategic planning effort concluded in late 2008 that was a fully collaborative process which included Leonard Slatkin. It took more than three years of dedicated effort on everyone’s part to successfully produce a long-range plan that was supported by the entire organization. It was the first time in the organization’s history that the musicians felt they had been involved in a meaningful process.
However, in June of 2009, only seven months later, a presentation was made to our board of directors by Michael Walsh, Jesse Rosen (League of American Orchestras) and others about the need to redefine the orchestra in the wake of the economic downturn. They felt that everything had to be on the table from the ground up, and that while it would be very difficult for the musicians to accept, it would be a ”great adventure.” After that presentation, DSO CEO Anne Parsons said, ”We’ll have to have a discussion and create a plan.”
I was stunned. Having been a participant in the strategic planning process for three years I couldn’t believe what I was hearing — that our strategic plan, not even a year old was essentially being shelved so that the ”powers that be” could ram home massive change using the financial crisis as cover.
All of the follow-up discussions have taken place in back rooms without DSO musicians present and management is now hoping that their stick is big enough to force the changes they desire.
So many times in the past the DSO management has failed to recognize the long-term implications of its actions. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this is yet another example.
For anyone wishing to read more, I have written a detailed account at:
http://detroitsymphonymusicians.org/strategicplanfullarticle.html
Shelley Heron
Oboist – Detroit Symphony Orchestra