Year in Review: For the Atlanta Symphony, it was a year divided and a time to assess the future January 2, 2015
By Mark Gresham
For Atlanta’s classical music scene, the latter part of 2014 was dominated by the nine-week lockout of Atlanta Symphony Orchestra musicians by the Woodruff Arts Center. The second lockout in two years, it proved a rocky time for the orchestra’s musicians and a critical point in the history of Atlanta’s classical music community, closely observed and reported upon by local, national and international media. It also became a hot topic on the internet in both the blogosphere and across social media.
It was a critical point not simply because of the locally unprecedented degree of conflict between arts labor and governance, and the all-too-tangible human toll it has taken; nor for the deeply debatable tensions between artistic excellence and financial restraint, which are ever ongoing. Rather, it was a significant signpost at a crossroads of thinking about how the city’s arts should move forward: whether to continue putting more and more cultural eggs in a singular, centralized institutional basket or to pursue instead a kind of balkanization by which the fate of the city’s major artistic exponents is no longer so firmly held in one fist. How that thinking will manifest remains uncertain as the new year begins with those challenges looming.
By Mark Gresham
For Atlanta’s classical music scene, the latter part of 2014 was dominated by the nine-week lockout of Atlanta Symphony Orchestra musicians by the Woodruff Arts Center. The second lockout in two years, it proved a rocky time for the orchestra’s musicians and a critical point in the history of Atlanta’s classical music community, closely observed and reported upon by local, national and international media. It also became a hot topic on the internet in both the blogosphere and across social media.
It was a critical point not simply because of the locally unprecedented degree of conflict between arts labor and governance, and the all-too-tangible human toll it has taken; nor for the deeply debatable tensions between artistic excellence and financial restraint, which are ever ongoing. Rather, it was a significant signpost at a crossroads of thinking about how the city’s arts should move forward: whether to continue putting more and more cultural eggs in a singular, centralized institutional basket or to pursue instead a kind of balkanization by which the fate of the city’s major artistic exponents is no longer so firmly held in one fist. How that thinking will manifest remains uncertain as the new year begins with those challenges looming.
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