Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
Amidst accusations of playing shell games with assets and failing to bargain in good faith, it looks like Delaware Symphony Orchestra (DSO) may manage to squeak out a 2013/2014 season. According to a few media reports, the DSO’s board chair, Tatiana Copeland, and AFM Local 21 Secretary/Treasurer, Glenn Finnan, hammered out a tentative agreement in face-to-face meetings, even after the DSO had already spent more than $60,000 in legal fees that …
Apropos to yesterday’s poll about the Minnesota Orchestra Association (MOA), the 5/15/2013 edition of MPR News published an article by Euan Kerr that reports the MOA’s prolonged work stoppage is inflicting hardships on partner institutions within the local Minneapolis performing arts sector. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone and according to Kerr’s article, the Minnesota Chorale appears to be hard hit by the loss of the MOA’s entire season. …
The Seattle Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and Seattle Symphony and Opera Players’ Organization (SSOPO) released statements on 5/6/2013 to announce that the organization has reached a tentative labor agreement that will extend through 8/31/2015. The SSO has been close to a work stoppage on a few occasions throughout the 2012/13 season but the pair of recent announcements appears to put those concerns to rest. Specific details of the agreement are not yet …
I’m honored and humbled to be at the center of Joe Patti’s 58/2013 Butts In The Seats article titled “It Only Appears A Mockery of Reality” where he harkens back to a series of Adaptistration posts from 2004 and 2006. Patti drills down on a series of Mock Negotiation exercises I conducted for the MBA students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Bolz Center for Arts Administration and Eastman School of Music’s …
Losing two minutes in the span of one week isn’t an achievement to be proud of but the Minnesota Orchestra Association (MOA) moves another minute closer to doomsday following the official decision to terminate what was left of the 2012/13 subscription season. Incidentally, doomsday is marked by organizational collapse and subsequent liquidation bankruptcy. In a press statement published the morning of 5/8/2013, the MOA cancelled five concert events in May, two …