Friday, September 19, 2014

Right now, I am grieving . . .

To My Friends on Facebook:

Some of you are family, some are very close friends, some are colleagues, and many are acquaintances. A few are friends only because someone suggested the friendship. Most of you I have met at least a few times. I joined Facebook in September of 2007, way back when status updates were mostly one-line blurbs like one of my first: “Jonathan Rick Smith…believes you can’t pop popcorn with cellphones.”

In these seven years I have tried to respect my friendship with you all by refraining from constantly giving you “traffic reports” on how I happen to be feeling at the moment or how someone has done me wrong. I try very hard to be a positive influence on those with whom I come in contact, especially to those I consider to be my friends.

But this time I’m going to share my feelings. And yes, it will probably be long and, to some of you I’m sure, boring. But that’s why Facebook handily includes the “Read More” link after several lines, so that people’s timelines aren’t clogged with long rants and soliloquies.

So if you’ve clicked “Read More” then you probably are actually interested in what I have to say. Or maybe you’re just curious at this point.


So here it is, and you can click back and skip my post in only a moment, once you know. Or you can read on. Gotta love Facebook!

Mom and Dad are fine, and none of my close friends has passed away or is gravely ill.

But right now I am grieving.

Here’s why. Each year for the past 17 years I have been a member of the Atlanta Symphony Chorus, singing, singing, singing. But I am not singing now, and quite possibly I won’t be for a long time.

During these years I have rehearsed with my 180 or so colleagues about 850 times for a total of about 2500 hours. I have performed onstage at the Woodruff Arts Center on Peachtree Street with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra approximately 350 times. Until a few years ago, I was considered a “baby” in the chorus because most of the chorus members have 20 or more years of service, and some are charter members with 44 years of service. The ASO Chorus was started in the 60s by Robert Shaw, who basically put choral music on the map in the USA. I had the privilege to work with him for two years until his death in 1999. Our chorus, MY chorus, has performed numerous times at Carnegie Hall and in various cities in the U.S. and abroad. I have been privileged to sing with the group in Miami, Chicago (Ravinia Festival), four times at Carnegie Hall and twice in Berlin with the Berlin Philharmonic. Nine of the ASO’s 27 Grammy awards are for Best Choral Performance. I am very proud to have sung on several of those recordings. Yes, I am proud to be a part of what many consider to be the finest chorus in the world!


So why am I grieving? Because management of the Woodruff Arts Center, which controls all of the ASO and everything that goes on at the huge building at 1280 Peachtree Street, has decided to lock out the Orchestra indefinitely. My Facebook feed is jammed with excellent blogs and posts in support of the musicians, who also in 2012 were locked out and eventually took a 14% pay cut so the season could go on unhindered. The musicians (as well as I and every chorus member I know) believe they have sacrificed enough and that the highly paid Woodruff Arts Center management (ASO president and CEO Stanley Romanstein’s salary was about $400K last year) should do their job of raising the money to keep Atlanta’s orchestra the “world class” orchestra it has worked hard to become.

So the musicians, who two years ago took the hit and went back to work at a lower wage, now are saying enough is enough, while management has refused to budge, even denying the players a “work while negotiating” situation so that Atlanta’s classical music could go on while both sides worked toward a solution to the problem.

What does this mean to the chorus? What does it mean to me? I and my colleagues in the chorus are volunteers, paid nothing for our service to the Symphony. So on paper at least, this doesn’t affect us at all. But without the orchestra, the chorus is pretty ineffective, almost useless. We are a team, a partnership. As nine Grammys will attest, they aren’t much without us, either.


So the bottom line is, at this point the orchestra has no season, no concerts, no rehearsals. Which means neither does the chorus.

I will confess right now that I have been guilty more than once of whining and complaining about leaving a full day’s work to drive 25 miles downtown to endure an often grueling 2.5 hour rehearsal for no pay. There is no denying that two and a half hours of intense work learning music is difficult, mentally taxing and physically tiring. But voicing any of that negativity to fellow chorus members usually gets a stare or a grimace in response or, occasionally, a comment like “nobody makes you sing in this chorus.” So I have learned that anytime I am very tired or not feeling well, I keep those feelings to myself and remind myself of what an incredible privilege it is to sing in the ASO Chorus!

But this week there was no Monday night rehearsal. For seventeen years I have been going to Monday night rehearsal, doing my best to support a cause I believe in, music for music’s sake. Just for the joy of singing. Okay, I also enjoy wearing a tux onstage and feeling pretty darn special about being a member of the best chorus in the world. But this week, no rehearsal. And it is slowly beginning to sink in that it could be a long time, a very long time, before I am privileged to attend Monday night rehearsal again. And one by one, the concert weeks I have really been looking forward to, like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony, likely will pass by without my wearing my tux or going downtown once, and, even more painful, without my getting to sing anything, anything at all.

Yeah, I’m grieving even the possibility of such a loss, and each week that goes by takes me closer to it becoming reality.

I could write another several paragraphs on how this is affecting Atlanta’s art scene, businesses and even our children’s future, but right now I’m feeling how it affects me, and I would like for that to stop.


Jonathan Rick Smith
ASOC #104

2 comments:

  1. Except for the unfortunate and inaccurate comment the the ASO is "... not
    much without us, either" (most of their repertoire is not choral), and except
    for changing the number of hours in rehearsal and performance over my 30
    years, you could otherwise have been speaking for me. Well said. I agree
    more deeply than I can say that singing in the ASOC is an incredible
    privilege (though it's natural to gripe when we're tired.)

    The only way I can endure feeling so helpless is to fantasize the joy we
    will experience at our net performance, WHENEVER that happens.

    It will happen.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We are not helpless! We are working tirelessly to see those days renewed by getting good information about this tragedy. telling our family and friends, spreading the word internationally here and, most importantly, encouraging the musicians -- who are the ones without a paycheck, lest we forget -- to continue to fight the good fight. Our woes at having been forgotten in this conflict are nothing compared with trying to pay a mortgage, feed a family, keep the chops up. We have to be vocal (if you'll pardon the expression) and let our 'masters' know that we don't take their messing with the status of our orchestra none too lightly ...

    ReplyDelete