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10/2/09 - Management Press Release |
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October 2, 2009
MEDIA RELEASE
New Hampshire Music Festival Advances Plans for the 2010 Season Despite Musicians’ Vote
The New Hampshire Music Festival has been busy planning its Summer Season for 2010. Working with our newly announced Artistic Director, Jonathan Gandelsman, we have been working on a Beethoven theme for the Classics Series while Michael Krajewski is planning the Pops Series. The program for this summer is being developed to create excitement for our musicians and our patrons and help us address our goal of expanding our audience base.
Toward that end, the Festival has been in discussions with its musicians during last summer and in the months since the Season ended to ensure that 2010 is a financial and artistic success. Last August, the Festival Board of Directors and the Orchestra Committee of musicians announced a Personnel Policy developed collaboratively that set out a process for re-inviting all incumbent musicians for the 2010 Summer Season. Both the Board and the musician representatives endorsed the approach as fair to our incumbent musicians while also enabling the Festival to move toward its vision of even greater artistic excellence.
This week, the musician representative advised the Festival that, in a vote, the musicians overwhelmingly rejected the Personnel Policy. “The results of the poll disappointed us,” said Festival Chairman Rusty McLear, “especially since both sides have worked so hard on a personnel policy based on shared interests and common ground.”
The Policy outlines a process for how the Festival will hire musicians in 2010. The suggestion for the manner of initial selection of musicians and evaluation during next season originated with the musicians. Together we developed the language that became the Festival Personnel Policy. It ensures fairness in the process in a fiscally responsible manner. The Festival was informed that the musicians rejected the Policy because the Festival conditioned re-employment of incumbent musicians and new musicians on its financial ability to sustain the positions that were to be created.
The Festival has been planning the 2010 Season with a much larger orchestra than that employed in 2009 at wages 25 percent higher. McLear said, “We are baffled that the musicians would reject a Personnel Policy simply because it is grounded in sound fiscal principles. The Festival would be remiss if it guaranteed an expansion of the orchestra and increased compensation without the financial means.”
The Festival has announced that it intends to proceed to implement the personnel process that was developed jointly with the musicians’ representatives.
McLear explained that our musicians have always been hired independently on annual renewable contracts. McLear said, “In spite of the vote, we hope that the musicians will decide to return for the 2010 Season. We welcome them to join with us to create an even better, stronger Festival that will be a musical destination for audiences and professionals alike.”
Debbie Karis Graham
Communications Officer
New Hampshire Music Festival
52 Symphony Lane
Center Harbor, NH 03226
ph. 603.279.3300
fax 603.279.3484
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Press Releases
The personnel policy that the NHMF Orchestra has been working under since 1992 holds protection for the musicians, such as rights of contract renewal (tenure), allowance for personal leave and a dismissal process that includes peer review. These are all usual terms found in any Orchestral collective bargaining agreement, and rightly so. They are there to protect single musicians or groups of musicians from arbitrary or capricious decisions that reflect the self-interest of an individual or group.
Management's continued insistence that all incumbents are reinvited for the 2010 season is misleading, since they use the term "incumbent" to mean only those musicians who will be given contracts. In fact Management is attempting to put a new personnel policy in place for the 2010 season which would allow them to permanently replace 30 of us with 20 outside professional musicians and 10 students of Management's choosing. This represents a loss of half of our Orchestra. They have removed rights of renewal and peer review. There is no cap on further dismissals. The half of our Orchestra who is invited back for 2010 could be dismissed in its entirety following next summer's Festival. Newly appointed Artistic Director, Jonathan Gandelsman, is expected to review, within a few weeks time, the players left in the orchestra next summer, with an eye on who to dismiss. His decision to dismiss will be final. No appeal.
This represents a huge departure from sound orchestral management, and is unheard of in the music world. It is a thinly disguised attempt to replace this orchestra with another one of Management's choosing.
Add to that the icing on the cake. Management recently inserted new language into the policy that would further reduce the incumbent musicians, due to a lack of funds. The Orchestra committee agreed on August 14 to Management's final offer BECAUSE we were told that next year's season would be funded through an anonymous donor.
If the Board of the NHMF is naive enough to believe, as Rusty McLear has stated, that "We are baffled that the musicians would reject a personnel policy simply because it is grounded in sound fiscal principles", then they are really in the dark about what they are doing. Doesn't a rejection vote of 59-3 tell them anything? We also wonder what Mr. McLear could mean by "shared interests and common ground", lofty words indeed, when set against a backdrop of an entire management that has failed to take the pulse of its orchestra, chorus or the members of its own audience.