Over the past few days I’ve been hit with a strange sense of déjà vu… as well as an impending disaster.  Both these feelings are tied to the ongoing story of the Ft. Worth Symphony Orchestra (FWSO) and its contentious labor negotiations with its musicians.  Negotiations have drawn on for more than a year, through 29 bargaining sessions, but once again the management refuses to budge.  Once again an orchestra’s management seeks to “right size” its budget through drastic pay cuts borne entirely by the musicians.

Once again an orchestra seeks to cut its way to prosperity.
You’ll immediately understand why this seems so familiar—this ugly scenario closely mirrors similar meltdowns with the Minnesota Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera, Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra…
…you get the point.

"[M]usic director Robert Spano summed up the season this way in an e-mail: “This season we celebrated the 100th birthday of Robert Shaw, and in a sense that meant celebrating ourselves, because we are living his legacy. That’s the beauty of a living tradition: not the husk of what once was, but the vitality of what continues to thrive and evolve. That is also the case with the music created hundreds of years ago that continues to live through us today. By honoring and attending to our roots, to our past, we better envision and cultivate our future, buoyed by the rushing current generated by our forebears.” "