Repercussions

The management of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has now “regretfully announced today the cancellation of its orchestral concerts through November 8, 2014, including the Opening Night performance of the 2014-15 Season on September 25 due to negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement between ASO management and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Players’ Association” according to their press release on 9/22

(http://www.atlantasymphony.org/1415postponed).

Let’s be clear, the cancellation is not due to negotiations, but rather to management’s refusal to engage in “play and talk” or to negotiate at all with the musicians

(see http://maskoftheflowerprince.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/preemptively-cancelling-concerts/)

Have the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Woodruff Arts Center management really thought about the long-term effects of this lockout? The following quote from James Levine regarding the Met’s brush with disaster this summer is to the point:

The Met has not had a lockout since 1980, and at least one member of the company dreaded repeating the experience. “The effect on the morale, the effect on future planning, if we hadn’t been able to agree .... ” Mr. Levine said, trailing off in his first public comments on the union dispute.

“I lived through one of those,” he continued in an interview in the patrons lounge at the opera house. “That was the worst nightmare of my life, in artistic terms. It went on for years, the ripples. This would not have been a good time to have that problem, with City Opera, etc.,” he said, referring to the recent bankruptcy of New York City Opera, a worst-case event that loomed over the Met’s talks.

New York Times, 9/21/2014 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/arts/music/season-rescued-the-met-tackles-an-oddly-resonant-figaro.html

The members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra are now enduring their second lockout in as many years. What does this mean for the orchestra members, chorus, and patrons?

All trust in the management (what little was left after 2012) is now gone. I used to make my own little modest donations to the ASO, in addition to volunteering as a singer in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus and Chamber Chorus, but after 2012 I swore I would not give any more money until I could be sure it would go to support the music, and not disappear into the black hole of the Woodruff Arts Center.

Donors, season subscribers, and individual ticket holders are being lied to (by the implication that negotiations are ongoing, that the cancellation of concerts is the last thing that management wanted, when a lockout has clearly been part of their strategy all along), so management is alienating its most valuable constituents. At the same time they have the temerity to suggest that ticket holders might want to “consider the full face value of [their] unused tickets as a contribution to the ASO.”

Stanley Romanstein Ph.D., President and CEO of the ASO, and Virginia A. Hepner, President and CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center, have no plan, no vision, other than to cut the amount of money spent on the people who actually fulfill the mission of the ASO by creating great music. This is madness. You cannot just cut your way to financial health and artistic excellence.

We know that there is dissent among the board members of the ASO and WAC. One board member has already resigned in disgust (http://www.artsatl.com/2014/09/news-aso-cancels-performances-board-member-resigns-protest-lockout/). Now is the time for other board members to stand up and make a difference. If that doesn’t succeed, then they should also resign in protest.

As Levine said, the damage from this second lockout to the morale of the musicians  and to the loyalty of your donors and audience will last for years, and will only become more severe the longer this situation continues. Stanley and Virginia, do you really want this to be your legacy? Because believe me, we all will remember.

As we in the chorus are often called upon to sing:

Confutatis maledictis,

Flammis acribus addictis...

When the wicked are confounded

And doomed to acrid flames...

Although I realize that this is way over the top, this is what I have been driven to by this situation: I find myself imagining Robert Shaw rising, like the Commendatore, to drag those responsible for this debacle down to the pits of hell. But remember, the Commendatore gave Don Giovanni a last chance to repent...

Keith Langston

Tenor I (ASOC member since 1998)