TubeNet

tuben wrote: 5 - This is my final shot across the bow of the tubenet. I've been a member of this site since the mid-1990's. The site no longer holds my attention like it once did when there were interesting topics. Good luck to you all, go practice.

Bye-bye.

You won't be missed.

I agree with all 5 points. As to why your previous post was deleted... I saw nothing inflammatory or political...

Hey, Robert, don't take it personally. It's almost impossible for this topic to avoid emotion and diatribe, as witnessed by the combatants on both sides in Louisville.

Around 1990, the San Antonio Symphony was in a similar situation. The musicians went on strike, and then came back but without anyone really solving the underlying problems. Then, the symphony board cancelled the regular season. Different people, driven by many of the musicians, created an alternative organization called Orchestra San Antonio to keep the music going. They hired many of the local symphony musicians plus others as needed to put on programs that year, mostly as a means of keeping the musicians around.

This provided a couple of key outcomes. One is that the SA Symphony got a cost breather, without the musicians being completely out of work. The musicians who were able to do so worked for OSA for nearly nothing, while others were paid by the service only. OSA was funded from ticket sales and donations. It was definitely a shoe-string operation, but it also helped keep the focus on the situation at hand. I think it was about halfway into the season when the SA Symphony resolved their contract with the union and they resumed their season. OSA ceased to exist, and the musicians went back to work.

Those who worked for OSA might be considered scabs by some reckoning, but in reality it was a demonstration by the musicians that they were even more committed to a symphony in San Antonio than the SA Symphony board. The musicians built the support for the alternative orchestra idea and made it work long enough to fill the gap.

I know the guy who played tuba in OSA, and when the SA Symphony restarted, Karl Hovey subbed the remainder of the season (Mike Sanders was on sabbatical and playing in Utah for that season).

Symphonies have to have enough gozintas to pay for the gozoutas. Sometimes, priorities about which gozoutas are really important become wacky, but if the gozintas dry up, creativity is required. Orchestras made deals when their situations were different, and so did musicians. Neither may have enough control over the situation to cover those deals when times turn sour. Boards are often populated by lawyers, however, and they see everything in adversarial terms. Musicians are negotiating over grocery money, and for them the discussion there includes more than a little desperation. Both undermine creativity.

What I see now is a management determined to replace the musicians and musicians determined to prevent management from being able to hire anybody to do so. No creativity there, but potentially quite a bit of scorched earth.

Rick "wondering who will win the race to the bottom" Denney