Thank you for your support of The Cleveland Orchestra.
Each of us on the stage is one of the best musicians there is on our particular instrument. We won our positions in this orchestra after highly competitive auditions. But it’s not just our individual talent that makes The Cleveland Orchestra one of the best in the world. It’s our commitment to quality and musical integrity, both individually and collectively.
Today we find ourselves at a turning point in our careers as musicians. Over the past decade, while the Musical Arts Association has promoted us around the world as “the best,” our standing in compensation among American orchestras, both in salary and benefits, has slipped from the top tier to the second tier. As we all know, no company can keep its employees, much less recruit new talent, without paying a competitive wage, particularly when these same people are being recruited by other orchestras, ensembles, music schools and other venues on a regular basis.
We understand that these are unprecedented economic times in America and that all arts organizations are feeling the brunt of the recession with a decline in attendance, in annual giving and in their endowments. We are being told by our management that we have to accept a cut in both salary and benefits, because they have shown their willingness to share in the financial sacrifice. In point of fact, we have given concessions in our last two contracts both with pay freezes and drastic reductions in benefits. It is because of these reductions that we’ve slipped so far. We never used to pay our healthcare premiums. Now we share in the cost. We used to have a defined benefit retirement plan. Now we have no guaranteed benefit, and our investments in the stock market have taken the same hit as MAA’s endowment fund, in some cases more. We also have fewer opportunities for royalties and other sources of income from our work with the orchestra.
We’re not complaining. In fact, we’re proud that we have been partners with management in finding creative ways to keep the quality of our music at the top in a fiscally responsible way. Unfortunately, if we accept MAA’s current offer to us, we believe it will be the beginning of the end of the international reputation of The Cleveland Orchestra. We’re at the tipping point. As one of our members said in a recent meeting, “I came here to play with The Cleveland Orchestra, not some orchestra in Cleveland.” If we become just some orchestra in Cleveland, I doubt that you will want to continue to hear us play.
We applaud our Music Director, Franz Welser-Möst, for his passion and his commitment to quality; also our marketing department for promoting us as “the best” wherever we travel. Although our advertising praises us in print, our management belittles us when they meet with us, for example telling people in a press release that we work only 20 hours a week. Talk about an insult; if we worked only those hours you can be sure we wouldn’t sound like The Cleveland Orchestra. Look at it this way: given the same price for a ticket, would you rather pay to see the original Broadway cast of “Les Misérables” or see the third generation road show? By the same token, would you rather hear Beethoven’s 9th Symphony played by The Cleveland Orchestra or by some orchestra in Cleveland?
Again, thank you for your support of The Cleveland Orchestra.
What’s at stake here is holding onto one of the few – one or two or three – institutions in Cleveland that can truly be listed among the best in the world.
– Cleveland Magazine