Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
A morals clause, a provision in a contract or work agreement that prohibits or penalizes certain behaviors, have been around since the early part of the 20th century but by and large, they haven’t entered into mainstream employment agreements throughout the performing arts field. For the most part, they really aren’t applicable and/or the salaries involved didn’t rise to a level that would trigger these sorts of concerns. But the steady …
Even though the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra (FWSO) managed to avoid a work stoppage thanks to an eleventh hour one-year agreement, that doesn’t mean it prevented things from continuing to turn ugly. The latest development involves the musicians staging a sit-in at FWSO offices on Thursday, March 24, 2016 to protest what they defined as the employer’s “unilateral cancellation of all scheduled negotiation sessions.” The musicians released the following statement in …
If you have any interest in helping steer the larger arts marketing conversation, now’s your chance…but you’ll have to hurry. Thursday, March 31, 2016 is your final day to submit either a session proposal or session topic idea to the National Arts Marketing Project’s (NAMP) 2016 conference in Austin, TX from November 11-14. This year’s conference theme is Fueling Change: Across the nation, arts organizations and the communities they serve are …
In what feels like a roller coaster that simply won’t end, the San Antonio Symphony (SAS) recently announced a new round of cuts via a reopener to its existing two-year collective bargaining agreement (CBA), which covers the 2015/16 and 2016/17 seasons. The only potential silver lining in the cuts is instead of making the reductions permanent by reducing base wages, benefits, or season length, stakeholders agreed to opt for a temporary …
Regular readers are already aware that the single largest US employer of full-time professional musicians is the United States Armed Forces. In addition to their critical role inside the US Armed Forces, their contributions to the cultural and artistic fabric of communities they are stationed are practically too large to measure. But that doesn’t seem to stop legislators from looking at their meager budgets as fertile ground for cuts or to …