At the early part of last week, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra announced that they would conduct an internal inquiry into the NJSO’s purchase of philanthropist Herbert Axelrod’s “Golden Age Collection” of historic stringed instruments.
Month: August 2004
At Interlochen, The Future Isn’t Very Unique
Fellow AJ blogger Andrew Taylor recently wrote an interesting article about how to go about assessing value for "something vague and amorphous" like a weblog. Andrew goes on to say that arts managers are doing exactly the same thing each and every day for their organizations.
Doing A Good Thing For The Right Reasons in Philly
Hot on the heels of being accused by the Philadelphia Orchestra Association (POA) “that their collective efforts at revenue generation have not had a material impact on the budget” the Philadelphia Orchestra musicians are donating even more of their time, money, and energy to help improve their orchestra’s finances. On Sunday, February 13, 2005 former Philadelphia Orchestra Music Director, Riccardo Muti will lead the full orchestra in a performance at Philadelphia …
The Negotiation Process: A Historical Timeline
The manner in which contract negotiations have developed over the past 50 years has been fast and furious. Even the term “traditional bargaining” is in itself, not very accurate since it’s only been used for the past 40 years or so. Before then, musicians didn’t even have a voice in how their contracts were negotiated; it was all handled between the AFM local union officers and the orchestra managers. By and …
Pension Plans And Negotiations Part 2
To continue where Part 1 left off, we’ll examine how some of the pension issues related to the Philadelphia Orchestra situation have influenced the course of negotiations. The Philadelphia Orchestra Association (POA) utilizes a defined benefits pension plan. This means the POA and not the individual players assume the risk to ensure that the pension plan has enough funds to make the required payments to retired employees. The POA expands on …