Contract!
Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2020 8:21 am
Well, we did it! My orchestra managed to salvage our huge contract with Jackson Public Schools. They will allow us — for this one year, only — to provide them with recordings of our YPC (3rd, 4th, and 5th grades) and KinderKonzert (K, 1st, and 2nd grades) series (downtown in the hall) as well as the 120 Informances our three chamber ensembles perform at the schools (5th grade).
Our Chamber and Bravo series (small and large orchestras) are sort of being melded together and will be mostly string-only programs, but the other players are working, too. The brass section will be performing some double quintet (well, sort of) arrangements out on the balcony of the mezzanine level of Thalia Mara Hall at the first concert. We will use all eleven players spread out along the rails, standing, playing for the patrons.
The MSO Brass Quintet has already performed once. It was difficult, as we were spread out about thirty feet from trumpet to trumpet, sitting outside, performing for patrons who were participating in a fundraiser. We had stanchions around us to keep people away, and we had to deal with some other COVID-19 weirdness that the musicians designed as per CDC recommendations. It was stressful, but I never felt like I was endangered. (I have diabetes and asthma, which put me into the same category as elderly people. I have a significant chance of dying if I contract this nastiness. I am *very* scared and respectful of this virus and have been super careful since I started isolating on March 8th. I am in no more danger of contracting it than any of you, but I am in danger of dying *if* I contract it. That means that I am taking all of this with a grain of salt, and being my usual, cynical self about it, but I AM PLAYING AGAIN and I AM BEING PAID 94% OF MY NORMAL SALARY!!!!)
Our negotiating team had to cope with the Management team, as usual, which was not a big deal. Management made it clear from the get-go that they wanted to keep all the A level players fully paid, even if they were not working, so we would not quit and move away. The issue was with AFM itself. They would not give us a break on how we negotiated the recordings, neither on the remuneration nor the numbers of personnel to be used. (Recordings are *very* strictly controlled.) Eventually, the agreement was to have office staff and Contract A players take a 6% pay cut to allow our Contract B players to receive a certain percentage of their small service guarantees. Then we had to use our A and B players to make the recordings. (No provisions were made for Contract C players.)
In the end, I took a 6% pay cut, but I also am not working very much in return, so I am on a sort of Musical Welfare for this one season, so I am pretty grateful for that. I have TONS of time to finish projects and work another job to get my depleted savings back up to at least some of what we spent down due to our partial unemployment from our now-defunct teaching program. So Scottye and I will make it now, though things will be super-tight for the whole year. Again, I am grateful for what we ended up with, grateful to our wonderful Board and Management. Had this happened in 1996 we all would have been tossed out by the Board and an orchestra of players hired from Eastern Europe would have replaced us. And they would not have cared if anyone got sick and died. And this is NOT an exaggeration of our former situation here. It was that bad. (Imagine the leader of the Management/Board negotiating team throwing office chairs and flipping over the conference table, because that crap happened. I was there. It was THAT acrimonious back in the Dark Ages here.)
Also, the AFM interference surprisingly helped us work out a better contract that includes 2/3 of the orchestra, keeping all of "the usual suspects" partially to nearly completely employed. Contract C players generally only work a few times a year, being subs and extras, so they do not rely on the MSO to pay for their house or car, etc. so we made the worst cuts in that segment. We have probably 50 or 60 C players, but most of them only work for 10 to 20 services a season, max.
Being so paranoid about being out and about while sucking in all that air to power my tuba, I am satisfied with the precautions we are taking for both indoor and outdoor programs. We have about 25 high-risk people in our ranks, due to age, or compromised immune systems, or pulmonary issues. That is nearly half the group. So our player committee formed to study the situation and then provide a list of procedures and practices to cope with this, as well as our committee to come up with viable (SELLABLE) programming that is safe for us as well as the audience were very successful, so my orchestra will be providing a pared-down season that is still a very good deal for our patrons, to include limited exposure live programming as well as a pay-per-view series that has sold a lot of subscriptions before we have even recorded anything yet.
We're going to make it, folks.
Our Chamber and Bravo series (small and large orchestras) are sort of being melded together and will be mostly string-only programs, but the other players are working, too. The brass section will be performing some double quintet (well, sort of) arrangements out on the balcony of the mezzanine level of Thalia Mara Hall at the first concert. We will use all eleven players spread out along the rails, standing, playing for the patrons.
The MSO Brass Quintet has already performed once. It was difficult, as we were spread out about thirty feet from trumpet to trumpet, sitting outside, performing for patrons who were participating in a fundraiser. We had stanchions around us to keep people away, and we had to deal with some other COVID-19 weirdness that the musicians designed as per CDC recommendations. It was stressful, but I never felt like I was endangered. (I have diabetes and asthma, which put me into the same category as elderly people. I have a significant chance of dying if I contract this nastiness. I am *very* scared and respectful of this virus and have been super careful since I started isolating on March 8th. I am in no more danger of contracting it than any of you, but I am in danger of dying *if* I contract it. That means that I am taking all of this with a grain of salt, and being my usual, cynical self about it, but I AM PLAYING AGAIN and I AM BEING PAID 94% OF MY NORMAL SALARY!!!!)
Our negotiating team had to cope with the Management team, as usual, which was not a big deal. Management made it clear from the get-go that they wanted to keep all the A level players fully paid, even if they were not working, so we would not quit and move away. The issue was with AFM itself. They would not give us a break on how we negotiated the recordings, neither on the remuneration nor the numbers of personnel to be used. (Recordings are *very* strictly controlled.) Eventually, the agreement was to have office staff and Contract A players take a 6% pay cut to allow our Contract B players to receive a certain percentage of their small service guarantees. Then we had to use our A and B players to make the recordings. (No provisions were made for Contract C players.)
In the end, I took a 6% pay cut, but I also am not working very much in return, so I am on a sort of Musical Welfare for this one season, so I am pretty grateful for that. I have TONS of time to finish projects and work another job to get my depleted savings back up to at least some of what we spent down due to our partial unemployment from our now-defunct teaching program. So Scottye and I will make it now, though things will be super-tight for the whole year. Again, I am grateful for what we ended up with, grateful to our wonderful Board and Management. Had this happened in 1996 we all would have been tossed out by the Board and an orchestra of players hired from Eastern Europe would have replaced us. And they would not have cared if anyone got sick and died. And this is NOT an exaggeration of our former situation here. It was that bad. (Imagine the leader of the Management/Board negotiating team throwing office chairs and flipping over the conference table, because that crap happened. I was there. It was THAT acrimonious back in the Dark Ages here.)
Also, the AFM interference surprisingly helped us work out a better contract that includes 2/3 of the orchestra, keeping all of "the usual suspects" partially to nearly completely employed. Contract C players generally only work a few times a year, being subs and extras, so they do not rely on the MSO to pay for their house or car, etc. so we made the worst cuts in that segment. We have probably 50 or 60 C players, but most of them only work for 10 to 20 services a season, max.
Being so paranoid about being out and about while sucking in all that air to power my tuba, I am satisfied with the precautions we are taking for both indoor and outdoor programs. We have about 25 high-risk people in our ranks, due to age, or compromised immune systems, or pulmonary issues. That is nearly half the group. So our player committee formed to study the situation and then provide a list of procedures and practices to cope with this, as well as our committee to come up with viable (SELLABLE) programming that is safe for us as well as the audience were very successful, so my orchestra will be providing a pared-down season that is still a very good deal for our patrons, to include limited exposure live programming as well as a pay-per-view series that has sold a lot of subscriptions before we have even recorded anything yet.
We're going to make it, folks.
being widely expressed).