November 20, 2013

Dear AFM Members and Friends,

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior recently voted to cut the fiscal year 2014 National Endowment for the Arts budget by 49%.  As professional musicians we understand how NEA funding not only brings the arts alive but generates jobs and tax revenues that support our communities.

In an effort to help you share your voice, we have developed a campaign that allows you to contact your federal representatives in the House and Senate.  I encourage you to sign on to this campaign urging Congress to support President Obama's recommendation of $155 million for the agency.  Members of Congress need to hear from you, their constituents who work as the leading professionals in the field.  

Thank you in advance for supporting this campaign.  If you need more information, please contact Alfonso Pollard, AFM Legislative Director on  202 274-4756.  Or you can email him at [email protected].

If you have a problem with any of the links, simply paste this address into your web browser: http://afl.salsalabs.com/o/5873/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=7484

Thank you for your commitment and for your membership. 

Sincerely,


Raymond M. Hair, Jr., International President
American Federation of Musicians
of the United States and Canada


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Protect Charitable Giving Incentives
Like thousands of other nonprofits in the arts, education, and human services, and other community organizations, most of America’s orchestras are classified as 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations. If it were not for this exemption and the deductibility of private donations, orchestras and many other charitable organizations, would be unable to serve community needs. Urge Congress to increase the capacity of the nonprofit sector to serve communities by preserving and strengthening incentives for charitable giving! 
https://secure3.convio.net/paa/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=405

For nearly 100 years, the charitable tax deduction has served as a model of our altruistic society and a key component of the survival of non-profits. Right now, Congress is considering limits to the charitable deduction in order to retain more tax revenue. Please take 60 seconds to sign this petition and encourage Congress to protect charitable giving initiatives. Thank you for your support!

Address to the 2012 ROPA Conference

Bruce Ridge, ICSOM Chair

August 4, 2012- Minneapolis

It is a great pleasure to be with you today here in Minneapolis, and to see so many friends. ICSOM and ROPA share a strong and beneficial relationship, built through a shared idealism, and also through a close friendship among the leaders. I consider President Lehmeier-Tatum one of my closest friends, and my respect for her bravery and dedication is immense. I rely on her advice frequently, and I admire every member of your executive board.

The ICSOM Governing Board is busy preparing for our 50th anniversary conference in just a few weeks in Chicago, the city of our founding. We will be welcoming many of people who built the organization through perseverance and bravery in the face of great challenges.

The need to create ICSOM was great in the early sixties, as at that time few musicians were able to earn a living wage, and they were often subject to immediate and arbitrary dismissal. Orchestral musicians had virtually no say in the negotiation of their contracts or in the governance of their own workplace.

It was a time when the field either had to move forward, or dissolve into irrelevancy. Through the leadership of America's musicians, the field did indeed move forward. Orchestral musicians were able to build a successful artistic life, with job security, with the freedom to take artistic chances, and with benefits that would allow them to care for their own children even as they dedicated their lives to advancing the education of the children of their communities, and to elevating the profiles of their cities through their diligent service.

The founders of ICSOM faced persecution from their managements, scrutiny from their union, doubts from their colleagues, and even caught the attention of their government through the House Un-Americans Activities Committee.

It seems so odd to me that union musicians would come under the scrutiny of the House un-American Activities Committee, because the creation of ICSOM was an entirely democratic act. After all, the Norris-LaGuardia Act, passed in 1932, proclaimed that “The individual unorganized worker is commonly helpless to exercise actual liberty. To be genuinely free, the individual worker must be able to organize collectively."

As I have prepared for ICSOM's 50th anniversary, I have studied the work of the founders and I've been amazed at their bravery and ingenuity. A recent, modern event reminded me of the difficult task the ICSOM founders encountered 

This year, when the management of the Louisville Orchestra put out the despicable call for replacement musicians, I wrote a notice to musicians everywhere urging them not to accept work from the Louisville Orchestra Incorporated while the true musicians of that orchestra were unjustly out of work. The message I wrote went around the world in just 24 hours. It was re-posted on Facebook 1400 times, and I received messages of support from as far away as Egypt.

But, the modern age of the Internet and social networking allowed me to accomplish that while sitting at my home desk in my pajamas. I merely hit "send" and the message spread across the world.

This incident made me all the more aware of the Herculean accomplishments of ICSOM's founders. The revolutionary ideas they brought to the arts scene of North America were advanced in those early years without even the convenience of a Xerox machine. Their idealism, dedication, bravery and unwavering commitment all are still at work as we gather here today as a united network of friends.

Now, our field faces another time of challenges, and we must once again come together in the spirit of friendship, dedication, and innovation that orchestral musicians found 50 years ago. We must re-dedicate ourselves, and we must not allow ourselves to feel discouraged. We must not give in to negativity and we must not allow the misguided and in astute statements about the future that emanate from some managerial organizations to dampen our spirit. There is a positive message that our audiences are eager to hear, and it is a message that stands in contrast to the negativity too often quoted in newspapers.

While the odds may at times seem stacked against us, we have the decided advantage of being right.

At the time of ICSOM's founding, the arts and culture industry in America was a $3 billion dollar marketplace. Today, as revealed in studies conducted since the recession, the arts represent over $135 billion dollars in annual economic activity. And, at a time when America is concerned with unemployment, the arts support over four million full-time jobs.

The new study from our friends at Americans for the Arts demonstrates the remarkable resiliency of the arts in America. The arts generate over $86 billion in household income.

These numbers are even more remarkable when viewed in context with the environment in which this research took place. The new study, called Arts and Economic Prosperity IV, was conducted throughout 2010, a time when unemployment was 9.7% (or more than twice the rate during the first study by Americans for the Arts.) The consumer confidence index had plummeted, and home foreclosures reached 2.9 million.  The results of this study on the arts industry demonstrate clearly that the arts continue to play an essential role in our country's economic health, and in the recovery currently underway. When ICSOM gathers in Chicago in 18 days we will be meeting in a city where the arts generate over $2.1 billion annually, and where ICSOM musicians are vital to the economy of the region.

As we have often said, the question should not be whether we can afford to invest in America's orchestras, but rather how can we afford not to?

Some managers profess with great commitment that the current climate for fundraising represents an insurmountable obstacle. But according to Giving USA, in a study conducted with Indiana University, arts giving in America increased by 4.1% in 2011, to over $13 billion. This followed an increase of 5.7% in 2010. Arts contributions are recovering from the depths of the 2008 recession almost twice as fast as other categories of charitable giving.

While putting a monetary value on priceless music seems counterintuitive, we find ourselves in a place where we must dispute the claims of some managers that our orchestras cannot be supported. They emphasize the negative while seemingly blind to the positive, and seemingly unaware that negativity breeds only negativity.

If you look at the food industry, approximately 90% of restaurants fail in their first year of business, but no leader within the restaurant industry would profess that Americans no longer like to eat.

I read a book this year on James Garfield who once followed an over the top performance by one his political opponents by saying that while he too could often be mesmerized by the tumultuous churning of the sea, he realized that the true depth of the sea is measured in the calm.

If we can set aside the negative, hyperbolic rhetoric of some managers during this time of economic difficulty, in the calm we can see:

• That the Buffalo Philharmonic generates over $25 million annually for the city of Buffalo and currently has a surplus.

• The Boston Symphony generates over $166 million for Massachusetts, and just received a $7.5 million gift.

• The St. Louis Symphony saw tickets sales, gifts, and the endowment grow in 2011

• The Oregon Symphony has seen ticket sales and attendance rise.

• The North Carolina Symphony has met an $8 million challenge grant two years in a row.

• The New York Philharmonic has raised $90 million, nearly double its goal.

• The New Jersey Symphony raised $35 million, surpassing its goal

• The Houston Symphony broke its own records for fundraising for its annual fund for the second straight year

And, despite the negativity of destructive editorials written in the Denver Post by an officer of the board of the League of American Orchestras, the Colorado Symphony, which that same officer wanted to shut down in December, will finish this season in the black.

As we face the challenges before us, and there will certainly be challenges ahead, we must not be discouraged.

As ICSOM led at its founding, we all must lead again into a new era of positive advocacy. I call on musicians everywhere to join in the positive message of advocacy. It surely must be clear to us by now that no one is going to do this for us. This is our mission, and we must join together as never before, because something precious is at stake. While we cannot guarantee success, we can guarantee failure should we not make this effort.

There was a study recently conducted in the Chicago public schools, where three pilot schools of very different socio-economic populations were immersed in an intense arts program. The standardized testing for those schools improved by 12%. No one would protest that music is good for education. Why is that message lost in negativity? 

In remembering Gore Vidal this week, I was reminded that he once said that "whatever is wrong with human society can be put right by human action." 

The message of hope that we can promote is that orchestras are relevant to the community. Orchestras are an investment, with both financial and educational results for the community. Every orchestra is a family, and every manager has been granted a sacred trust with the community to preserve that family.

The future of the field and the future for live performance of this incredible music is in the hands of everyone here, and in the hands of every musician everywhere.

At a time when there are some who doubt America's orchestras, we will not doubt ourselves.

Let us continue to be inspired by the human action of the founders of ICSOM 50 years ago, and let us continue to build this great united network of friends of all symphonic musicians across the world.

Thank you for your friendship and support, and congratulations to you all, and your executive board for everything that you have accomplished. 

Letter to the ASO Board from the Musicians of the ASO

August 9, 2012

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Board of Directors of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra,

We hope your summer is going well. We wish this letter were simply a greeting to look forward to great music-making in a new Atlanta Symphony season. Unfortunately, we write instead with an urgent plea for your intervention to avert a catastrophe that threatens to derail the upcoming season and cause permanent damage to the ASO as a whole.

On May 15, ASO management announced a new business model to “ensure the continuation of great musical experiences [and]...find new ways to deliver our art for the 21st century....a template for the future that other orchestras could emulate.” Yet in contract negotiations, the ASO management is insisting on terms that will hurl us backwards rather than propel us forward, gut the heart of the Orchestra, render untenable the work lives of the very musicians who create these great musical experiences, and make it difficult if not impossible to retain them or attract new talent.

Last winter, several of you astutely questioned ASO executives’ erroneous claim that they were prevented by law from discussing contract negotiations with the board. ASO executives reassured you at a subsequent meeting on March 12 that the Draconian terms they had presented were “just the first proposal.” Five months later, they have not retreated from extreme measures that would strip the orchestra of its artistic integrity. They propose to reduce the total musicians’ expenses by 26%, slashing each musician’s compensation permanently by over $20,000, reduce the number of musicians from 95 to 89, and reserve the right to impose further reductions at their will.

The WAC board and ASO executives have announced that if we do not agree to their demands before August 25, they will lock out the Orchestra and cancel our health and dental insurance. While ostensibly bargaining in good faith, they clearly planned for this confrontation by scheduling the start of the 2012-13 season weeks after our contract expires, later than any season has ever begun before. Management apparently believes this will intimidate musicians yet pass unnoticed by the public and other interested parties, such as yourself.

Within the music world, the turmoil has already attracted plenty of attention. The troubling state of affairs has hurt the orchestra’s reputation and threatens to inflict long-term damage. At a recent ASO audition, only one-third of the usual number of candidates appeared, none of whom was qualified for even a temporary position. Numerous orchestra members are preparing for auditions elsewhere. Three have been invited to play with the New York Philharmonic this coming season, and may not return. Even without further reductions, the ASO ranks 14th in salary out of the top 18 full-time American orchestras. We must take steps to stanch this talent drain, and resolve conflicts that will otherwise hasten the demise of a great orchestra.

Is this the “template for the future” that the ASO management claims to aspire to achieve as a model for others to emulate? Certainly it does not live up to the WAC’s commitment to “never sacrifice the quality of the art.’’ Nor could the ASO expect to add to the 27 Grammy Awards it has brought back to Atlanta. Rather, it would cause irreparable harm to the orchestra and generate years of ill will.

We musicians are fiscal conservatives ourselves – we have to be in a profession in which our incomes do not rise significantly over the course of our careers even in the best of times as most professionals’ do. We do understand that changes are required, and are willing to help the ASO achieve a stronger financial position. The boards and management of the WAC and the ASO, as well as the musicians, must all play a fair part in achieving that financial stability. At the same time, we know that the financial problems of the ASO are not that the musicians are “just too expensive;” after all, the costs of employing 95 musicians comprise a mere 28% of the total ASO budget. The sacrifices must be shared. Management has claimed they have made cuts in staff compensation comparable to those they are demanding of us. We have yet to see any proof of this statement.

As many of you are aware, Orchestra musicians already made difficult concessions in 2009. We made others earlier to create the complement we have, steps we took -- together with the Music Director -- because both sides understood how important it was for artistic excellence. Those agreements, negotiated in good faith, helped propel the Atlanta Symphony to its place as one of the nation’s preeminent

symphony orchestras, which in turn burnished Atlanta’s image as great city. Today, the Woodruff Arts Center (WAC) board of directors proposes to undo that compact, taking away those benefits without any recompense.

The WAC board does not seem to understand or value what it takes to make a great symphony orchestra. Each member of the Orchestra devoted years to practice and individual study with eminent teachers before qualifying even to participate in the grueling audition process one must pass to play in the Orchestra, and each of us must continue to practice for many hours every week (whether being paid for our work or not) throughout our professional careers. Our instruments put many of us into debt that dwarfs student loans, auto loans, and even mortgages. ASO musicians’ level of expertise is comparable to that of major-league athletes, surgeons, lawyers or top engineers: it takes virtuoso musicians and years of working together to develop the cohesive, subtle, powerful sound that the ASO capably produces week after week. If it was easy to plug musicians into a group and sound fabulous, every city would have an internationally recognized orchestra!

It is glaringly apparent our institution must evolve in order to thrive in the 21st century. Other orchestras -- Los Angeles, Boston, St. Louis, Houston, Nashville, National, San Francisco, and the New York Philharmonic, to name a few -- have made exciting innovations in what they offer patrons and the larger communities they serve and in how they fundraise. The Dallas Symphony just announced a balanced budget after expecting a shortfall of $6.5 million. They expanded their donor base, added significant corporate and foundation support, and generated positive responses to new marketing and audience development initiatives – all areas where the ASO falls short. Atlanta has just as many Fortune 500 headquarters as Dallas. Yet the many creative ideas we offer for programming to reach untapped and under served audiences meet with silence and inaction.

The WAC model for supporting and evaluating the ASO must be reevaluated. The WAC board historically judges and punishes the Orchestra failing to produce a profit in each of its venues and activities – an entirely unrealistic goal. At the same time, the board impedes you, our ASO leaders, from forging relationships with corporations, foundations, and others that would enable us to raise additional funding, and redirects funds that could help us to other uses. One need only compare the WAC’s corporate donors to the ASO’s to see how few corporate contributions reach the Orchestra.

We are eager to realize the potential that exists, and we imagine you are, too. We hear only about what the ASO can't do - they can't find sponsors, corporate or individual donors, or government support. They can’t sustain future summer concerts. (Yet watch Stanley Romanstein speaking just last summer about our summer home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhLjoQnEewg.) And while management touts education and community engagement, they actually propose to cut community outreach by ASO musicians instead.

We need to bring to your attention one more related issue, that of the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater at Encore Park, which we believe merits close analysis. The amphitheater was touted as the Orchestra’s new summer home and a revenue center that would fund the Symphony and support our work there and elsewhere. We all sacrificed for this initiative, agreeing to lean contracts, concessions, and reallocations of funding in the expectation of added revenue in the future and a superior summer home where we could build new audiences. But after millions of dollars invested to build and run VWA, the income has fallen dramatically short of promises and projections. Unlike the Orchestra, VWA was designed for the purpose of generating revenue to support various functions of the ASO. Perhaps fiscal conservatism and the level of due diligence we exercise in our audition procedures should have been – and now must – be applied to VWA.

We need for the ASO to exercise strong and visionary leadership and for the WAC to fulfill its role as the supportive parent organization of a renowned symphony orchestra. We believe new WAC CEO Virginia Hepner when she says she cares “all about artistic excellence...having more arts and culture...and world-class art and education,” values we share with you as well.

The WAC and ASO boards need to get to the bottom of the current precarious fiscal condition and right the ship – without throwing the Orchestra, its most precious cargo, overboard. Musicians are willing to play a part in cutting costs. On August 2, we submitted our second proposal, which includes deep concessions. We proposed not only cuts in compensation, but also a permanent reduction in the size of the orchestra (with additional unfilled positions), two weeks of furloughs, and contributions to our health care premiums. These add up to a contribution of more than $2 million over two years. We are still waiting to see that sacrifice is shared and felt equally across the entire ASO organization.

The future of the ASO hangs in the balance. Your actions will determine whether the ASO remains the prize-winning orchestra in which so many people have lovingly invested for many decades.

We thank you, as always, for your generous gifts of time, support, and leadership, as well as for your friendship. We are equally grateful that you appreciate and understand the value -- and the need -- of together finding an economically viable solution that does not compromise the excellence the ASO has painstakingly built over generations. Please take action to avert the disaster we all face without your help, and work with us so that the ASO as a unified organization can ensure its future.

Sincerely,

The ASOPA Committee on behalf of all ASO musicians

ASOPA Committee: Daniel Laufer, President / Joel Dallow, Vice President Bruce Kenney, Secretary / Michael Moore, Treasurer At Large Members: Lachlan McBane, Sandy Salzinger, Christina Smith, Colin Williams E-mail contact: [email protected]

https://www.facebook.com/notes/atl-symphony-musicians/facebook-community-guidelines/223679804403485
Facebook Community Guidelines
April 19, 2012 at 10:12am 

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