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DSO Strike: The Future Of The Musician

Detroit Symphony Orchestra

http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/DSO%20Update.mp3

By Noah Ovshinsky, WDET

The ongoing labor dispute between the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and its musicians has largely centered on proposed pay cuts. Neither side can agree on salaries.

But management and players are also at odds over "work rules."

Just A Performer?
Just before the musicians of the DSO walked off the job in early October, CEO Ann Parsons asked a simple-but-loaded question that has come to define this labor dispute:

What is the role of the DSO musician going forward?

The question, which came during an interview last month with WDET, brought this answer.

"If we can broaden our scope of work that the players do under our contract, it might broaden our ability to attract new and different revenue sources."

This idea represents nothing short of a paradigm shift for large orchestras like the DSO. In the symphonic world it's called "Service Conversion" and it is very controversial. 

Right now, as has been the practice for decades, salaried players get paid based on set number of rehearsals and concerts per week. What Ann Parsons would like to do is have the flexibility to replace some of those so-called "services" with other activities -- possibly teaching, or community outreach.

Drew McManus, a nationally recognized expert on the orchestra business, says this kind of proposal makes musicians nervous.

"Because of the wide variety to how that can be interpreted, it becomes a complex conversation," he says. "You don't know exactly what you're talking about."

Control
It's not that the musicians don't engage in the kinds of activities management is asking them to.  They just don't like to be contractually obligated to so.  DSO Cellist Hayden McKay says it's an issue of control.

"One of the dangers in changing the job description so drastically would be if all of a sudden we no longer have control over that, and someone would say, 'Ok, you have to play this Mahler symphony at 8:00pm and in the morning you have to go out and do a school job and do these other things.

"It might be very hard for musicians to retain focus in a situation like that," McKay says.

Service Conversion is shaping up to be what McKay calls "an important factor" in labor talks.

Eyes On Detroit
But interest in the issue goes far beyond the negotiating table. Experts say musicians and management from across the country are paying close attention to the labor dispute in Detroit. All it takes, they say, is one major orchestra to embrace Service Conversion to create a ripple effect across the industry.  

McKay says, from management's perspective and too some degree his own, it makes sense.

"We can understand from their side of things that that might be seem reasonable," he says. "And it's possible that as the symphonic model adapts, the society changes, we don't have the built-in audience of people who just put in their calendar that every Thursday night...maybe the orchestra has to serve the community in a little more broad based fashion."

But McKay doesn't think Detroit, with its high-caliber orchestra, is the city to test these waters. Not in 2010, coupled with a demand for huge pay cuts.

Even Bigger Changes To Come?
Regardless of which large Orchestra is the first to pull the trigger so to speak, there are those in the industry who argue this discussion is way overdue. Joe Horowitz wrote the book, Classical Music in America: A History. He says the debate over "Service Conversion" speaks to what he calls a, "fundamental dysfunction" among the nation's orchestras. Horowitz argues that the modern orchestra plays too many concerts. 

There are exceptions," he says. "But as a rule, they give far more concerts than they should. More concerts than are needed. More concerts than people want. And it's a fundamental dysfunction."

Horowitz says concert over-kill is one of the reasons why many orchestras are struggling financially.  He says musicians should think of themselves as more of an educational resource than solely as concert performers. Moreover, he says, players should no longer expect to work full time.   

"I write books," he says. "I'm on my ninth book. I don't expect to support myself and my family through that one activity. I have to do other things because, in deciding to be a writer, I chose a field that's not like a being a doctor...it's not as lucrative.

"It has other rewards. And musicians all made that choice and they refuse to live with it." 

Horowitz says he's not suggesting musicians work outside the field. But he says, within music, players have to grow accustomed to doing things other than working for orchestra's full time.

The two sides may still be far apart in Detroit. But by all accounts, the word part-time has yet to be uttered during these increasingly bitter labor negotiations.