On Nov. 1, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s board of directors announced its intention to cut the musicians’ employment schedule from 52 weeks to 40, and their salaries by 17 percent. And if that were to happen, it could mark the end of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra as any kind of orchestra worth listening to–and possibly, the beginning of the end for other great orchestras in mid-size cities.
Over the last decade, there’s been plenty of strife in the world of classical music: a lockout at the Minnesota Orchestra in Minneapolis that lasted from the October 2012 to February 2014, a strike at the Detroit Symphony that cancelled half of the 2010-11 season because of a proposed 30 percent wage cut, a two-month 2015 strike in Pittsburgh that reduced a proposed cut in musician’s salaries by half, 11 percent wage cuts in Atlanta and Cincinnati. But in every case, both sides reached a compromise and the orchestras lived on as glories of their cities.
If the BSO is cut, what prevents it from being cut to ribbons? If a city has no need for a 52-week-a-year orchestra, why would it need a 40- or 30-week orchestra either? There is no such thing as a great part-time orchestra, no such thing as the best part-time musician. Once an orchestra becomes part-time, it is playing with a deck completely stacked against it. Several of the BSO’s best youngmusicians have already moved on to other orchestras, another 20 will consider it, and the best young musicians who might replace them will go look for jobs in Europe instead.
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