Posted on March 15, 2010 at 7:42 am by Robert Levine
in General |

The March 2010 edition of the International Musician, the official publication of the AFM, contained news of the AFM’s most recent success in influencing a recalcitrant employer:

Several managers and directors of New Hampshire Music Festival (NHMF) have left their posts, following overwhelming opposition to their plans to implement a “new artistic model” for the orchestra beginning summer 2010. Musicians opposed the new model because it created an implicit threat to their long-held positions with the orchestra.

Management personnel who have stepped down include Festival Director Henry Fogel, newly appointed Artistic Director Johnny Gandelsman, President David Graham, Vice Chairman Susan Weatherbie, and several other board members. With their departures, it has been determined that NHMF will continue to pursue the traditional orchestral approach that the musicians and community favored and fought for.

NHMF Orchestra Committee member Joseph Higgins of Local 9-535 (Boston, MA) says that the committee is working to establish new terms in the orchestra’s personnel policy, which would make musicians’ jobs with the festival more secure. “When we clarify some of these things, I think that the musicians will be ready to throw their full support behind the festival again and help in whatever way we can,” Higgins adds. “We love this festival and want it to succeed.”

Though not news to readers of this blog, this is obviously good news for the musicians of the Festival. But you could read the article over and over without noticing that, despite its publication in the AFM’s official journal and the mention of Local 9-535, this good news had nothing at all to do with the efforts of the AFM. (more…)

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Posted on January 27, 2010 at 2:10 am by Robert Levine
in General |

Apparently the New Hampshire Music Festival is doing a pretty thorough 180-degree turn:

Less than two weeks after abandoning pursuit of a new artistic vision and restructured orchestra, which sparked bitter controversy last summer, the Board of the NH Music Festival shuffled directors and management when it met last week. (more…)

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Posted on January 7, 2010 at 9:00 am by Robert Levine
in General |

I’ve been forwarded the text of a letter from the board of the New Hampshire Music Festival which would suggest a course reversal on their part:

The Board of Directors met on December 17th to review our artistic goals and the options available to us to achieve them starting with the 2010 season. After a long and comprehensive discussion, the board concluded it was not in the best interests of our audience, orchestra, management, or the board to embark on another season of division and tensions that marked 2009. Indeed, the board believed that to do so could put at risk the very existence of the Festival.

Consequently, the Board has changed course. It has decided to work toward its goal to create more exciting musical experiences in a more traditional way. We felt our plans to introduce a collaborative approach to music making with a contingent of new musicians, existing musicians and highly distinguished students was not going to be embraced. For that reason, pursuing that approach would not have achieved the collaborative environment we sought in presenting concerts for the enjoyment of our patrons. (more…)

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Posted on December 4, 2009 at 7:39 am by Robert Levine
in General |

In a blogging career lasting about 5 years now, I’ve learned not to expect much feedback. It’s not because people don’t read blogs about orchestras or the AFM – the two topics I write about – because the traffic stats show otherwise. And it’s not that people don’t care, because otherwise why would they take the trouble to read the blogs in the first place?

So I’ve been surprised by the reaction to what I’ve written about the New Hampshire Music Festival. I’ve gotten emails from Festival musicians, former Festival musicians, and local Festival supporters. I guess it’s possible I’m the target of a faux grassroots campaign – but every single email I’ve gotten to date has expressed a kind of sorrowful anger over the loss of something special in the writers’ lives due to the actions of Festival management. (more…)

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Posted on December 1, 2009 at 5:56 am by Robert Levine
in General, NHMF |

At the beginning of the 2009 New Hampshire Music Festival season, the Festival’s musicians were informed that they would be required to re-apply for their positions in the orchestra if they wanted to return for the 2010 season.

It’s hard to overstate just how unusual this is in our business. “Unprecedented” would not be too strong a word for it, in fact. And not because of the unionized nature of our industry; it’s because it’s highly unusual for any enterprise, in any industry, to require its entire workforce to re-apply for jobs they already hold. (Of course, in the interests of accuracy, I should note that the entire workforce of the NHMF wasn’t asked to re-apply for their current positions- only the musicians. Apparently the staff were doing their jobs just fine, at least according to the staff making the decisions.) (more…)

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Posted on November 26, 2009 at 1:52 pm by Robert Levine
in NHMF |

In addition to the comments in response to the posts on the New Hamspshire Music Festival cluster***k, I’ve received a number of private emails. I’ve requested, and received, permission to quote extensively from an email sent to me by a local observer with many connections to the Festival.

Anyone likely to read this knows that humanity is an essential aspect of the arts. When performances work, both players and audience feel the connections between artists performing together. What sets live performances apart, beyond the acoustical differences, and the real-time potential for unexpected nuance, is the awareness that real human beings who enjoy what they do are recreating great examples of human achievement. Audiences know this. They also like knowing the performers a bit as people. In a sense, it is the collective soul of the performers that makes the process attractive. (more…)

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Posted on November 24, 2009 at 6:00 am by Robert Levine
in General |

If one single factor underlies the turmoil at the New Hampshire Music Festival in the minds of the musicians and the external support group SOON, it appears to be the fear that Festival management intends to replace the orchestra with another group; a NYC-based orchestra called The Knights. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the fears have a solid basis, and that The Knights are attractive to Festival management in large part because they represent a ready-to-go “new model” for orchestras. (more…)

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Posted on November 22, 2009 at 12:17 am by Robert Levine
in General |

While doing some research on the New Hampshire Music Festival situation, I came across a blog post by Henry Fogel that I found both interesting on its merits and quite relevant to what’s been going on at the NHMF.

Back in May on his blog on the ArtsJournal site, Henry wrote about becoming Festival Director for the NHMF:

David Graham, the imaginative and courageous president of the festival, shares some of my feelings on this topic, and having read about them in this blog he began a relationship with me that has resulted in this exciting position. As we talked over the past year, David and I realized that we shared a deep passion for the musical experience as something transcendent, something so thrilling that one didn’t walk out of a concert and immediately go to a post-concert party with a dance band playing, because the experience you had just had wouldn’t let you do that… (more…)

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Posted on November 19, 2009 at 3:20 pm by Robert Levine
in General |

A friend of mine alerted me last week to a recent series of events at the New Hampshire Music Festival. I’ve been trying to make sense of what I’ve read in news articles, on the Festival musicians’ website, and from a outside organization of dissident supporters called SOON (Save Our Orchestra Now).

The only adequate word in the English language to describe the current situation is the one that begins with “clusterf” and ends with “ck.” It’s an important story for our industry,  made doubly important by the involvement in the Festival of one of the most prominent people in our field, former Chicago Symphony CEO and former League of American Orchestras president Henry Fogel. (more…)

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