DOS Orchestra #35 - 29-March, 1995

News from the world of professional orchestras.
Copyright 1995, International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians

Topics

Bolshoi Ballet: Chief Conductor Quits

Alexander Lazarev, chief conductor of the Bolshoi Ballet, resigned from the company on March 27. His departure is widely viewed as part of the continuing leadership battle at the Bolshoi.

Lazarev was a supporter of former artistic director Yuri Grigorovich, who left in early March in a dispute with company administrator Vladimir Kokonin. After Grigorovich's departure, Kokonin was fired by Russian president Boris Yeltsin and then rehired as executive director, while a supporter, Vladimir Vasilyev, a former principal dancer, was named artistic director.

Tass reported that Lazarev had already left Moscow for a new position in London. The paper also quoted a statement by Lazarev, in which he said that his resignation was "directly linked to the reforms of the administrative system and the artistic leadership... which has scored a convincing victory over the people of art and art itself."

Boston Symphony: New Violinist

Nicole Monahan, assistant principal second violin of the Charleston Symphony, has been hired by the Boston Symphony and will join the second violin section on April 10. She is a graduate of the Julliard School, where she studied with Cho-Liang Lin, among others.

China National Symphony Hires First Music Director

Zuohuang Chen, music director of the Wichita Symphony and the Rhode Island Philharmonic, has been appointed music director of the new China National Symphony, to be based in Beijing. Chen expects the new orchestra to make its debut performance in 1996.

Chen led the Central Philharmonic (Beijing) on its first American tour in 1987. He studied piano at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and studied conducting at the University of Michigan and the Tanglewood Music Center under Seiji Ozawa.

Chen has already announced his resignation from his Rhode Island position, but Wichita Symphony officials have expressed optimism that Chen will sign another contract with that orchestra after his current contract expires in May 1996. Chen told the Wichita "Eagle" that "from the bottom of my heart, I must say that I like the Wichita Symphony Orchestra a lot."

City of Birmingham Symphony: Airplane Rattle

Sir Simon Rattle, music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, has become the first living person to have a British Airways aircraft named after him.

British Airways, which has sponsored concerts by the orchestra for several years, named a Boeing 757, a long-range narrow-body aircraft operating the daily Birmingham-New York service, after Rattle at a ceremony on March 23 hosted by George Cooper, managing director of British Airways Regional.

Conejo, Ventura Orchestras to Merge

Officials of the Ventura County and Conejo symphonies announced on March 23 that the two orchestras would merge and form a new regional orchestra called the New West Symphony Orchestra.

The musicians of the two existing orchestras will not automatically be hired for the new orchestra, which is expected to employ approximately half the 160 musicians currently employed by both orchestras, although orchestra officials said that the currently employed musicians will get "first crack" at auditioning for the new orchestra.

Local officials were very enthusiastic about the merged entity. Tom Mitze, director of the new $63.9 million Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, told the Los Angeles "Daily News" that he believed that "the creation of the New West Symphony is a major [investment] in the artistic growth of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. It regionalizes the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza in the best of all possible ways." According to Felice Ginsberg, president of the Ventura County orchestra, the new orchestra will play in both the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza and the Civic Auditorium in Oxnard. She said "we are going to be one wonderful orchestra - we will have two performance venues."

Musicians were not so enthusiastic. Antonia Boehm, a violinist with the Conejo Symphony, told the "Daily News" that "[I] know how our Conejo Symphony Orchestra thinks about it. They are not happy." Officials of Local 581 of the American Federation of Musicians, which serves Ventura County, said that most of the musicians of the two orchestras only learned about the merger hours before the announcement, which comes less than one year after the Ventura County orchestra musicians reached their first collective bargaining agreement with the orchestra. Michael J. Smith, president of Local 581, said that the union's attorney was examining the legal ramifications of the merger with respect to the labor agreement. He told the "Daily News" that "the issue is whether this new entity is a continuation of the old entity with a new name and bound under the agreement with the old entity, and I have no comment on that."

Stephen Thiroux, a bassoonist with the Ventura County orchestra and the orchestra's union representative, said that the most important part of the labor agreement was that it gave the orchestra musicians the right of first refusal on orchestra services. He said that, if the merger resulted in Ventura County orchestra musicians losing their positions after negotiating a new labor agreement, "I feel obligated to prevent that from happening."

The Ventura orchestra waa awarded a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in December in support of its five-year growth plan. Last season the orchestra went through its first labor negotiations, which were marked by management threats to cancel the season or replace the orchestra's concerts with concerts by foreign orchestras, a plan the management jettisoned after the union explained to the media that the logistical difficulties of doing so, including problems with immigration, were immense. The union also filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board over the termination of two members of the musicians' organizing committee. An interim agreement for the 1994-95 was reached on September 22 which included a "no firing" clause for the season and a grievance and arbitration procedure.

La Scala: First Woman Conductor

French conductor Clair Gibault became the first woman to lead the orchestra of La Scala on March 26 when she directed a performance of Fabio Vacchi's opera "La Station Thermale."

Gibault, 49 has directed the Lyon Opera since 1990 and has conducted at the Royal Opera at Covent Garden and the San Francisco Opera. She was an assistant at La Scala to Claudio Abbado.

Los Angeles Philharmonic: Proposed Hall in Jeopardy

Los Angeles County Chief Administrator Sally Reed has threatened to pull the plug on plans for the proposed new home for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Walt Disney Concert Hall. She told the Los Angeles "Daily News" that she expects to recommend within two weeks whether or not to issue a default notice to the county's private partners in the venture, the Walt Disney Concert Hall Committee. "We're still weighing the numbers on the table," she told the "Daily News." "We got the report, we got the numbers. We're weighing our options. We still hope they can build it." The county owns the 3.6 acre site on which the hall would be built.

The report Reed referred to was a review, commissioned by the committee and conducted by the Hines Interests Limited Partnership, which was released on March 3. The report said that the project would need to raise another $79 million in private funds. The hall committee has already raised $105 million from Walt Disney's family, but projected costs for the 2,380-seat concert hall continue to escalate, and are now projected to reach $288.5 million. According to the report, approximately $30 million could be saved by eliminating some planned amenities and scaling back some of the architectural design features, such as the facility's stone cladding. Richard Volpert, a real estate lawyer hired by the county to represent it on the project, told the "Daily News" that "[the committee] has got to get out there and do some serious fundraising or it will die of its own inaction."

The original plans for the hall were extremely ambitious. The architect, Frank Gehry, won an international competition to win the contract to design the facility, and his design has been widely praised.

Milwaukee Symphony: New Executive Director

Steven A. Ovitsky, vice-president and general manager of the Minnesota Orchestra, has been appointed executive director of the Milwaukee Symphony, orchestra officials announced on March 27.

Ovitsky, 47, joined the Minnesota Orchestra staff in 1990 at the invitation of then-president Deborah Borda. Prior to assuming that position, he had served as artistic director and general manager of the Grant Park concert series in Chicago, a summer series featuring full orchestra concerts at the Chicago lakefront park. While at Grant Park, Ovitsky hired Zdnenek Macal as principal conductor, his first American position. Macal subsequently became the MSO's music director.

Before going into orchestra management, Ovitsky had spent eight years in public radio as program manager at WMHT-FM in Schenectady (NY) and fine arts director at WNIU-FM at Northern Illinois University.

Ovitsky started his career in the 5th Army Band (US Army) as a hornist, and has performed on recorder and natural horn in early music groups in Chicago and Minneapolis. His arrangement of Gabrieli's "Sonata XX a 22" was performed by the Minnesota Orchestra in Carnegie Hall in 1994.

Ovitsky told the Milwaukee "Journal" that his top priorities were hiring a replacement for Macal, whose term as music director will end in June, bringing the orchestra's annual budget into line with its long-range plan, and reorganizing the current endowment campaign. He also told the "Journal" that he would try to boost attendance, saying "each orchestra fits its home environment differently. What works in one town might not work in another. I want to get the lay of the land. I want to talk to the artistic staff, the audience, the board, and synthesize those perspectives into a position for this orchestra to build upon. A full house makes the audience, the musicians, the city and the whole area more excited about what we're doing. It's a challenge to grow an audience during a period without a music director. It can feel like a rudderless time, but it really isn't. It's a very exciting time for an orchestra. And when a music director is named, you'll see a lot more excitement. Then, we'll have to deliver on that."

Ovitsky replaces Joan Squires, who left the MSO in December to assume a similar position with the Phoenix Symphony, an orchestra whose budget is approximately one-half that of the MSO's. Squires' tenure as executive director, which lasted less than two years, was marked by the most bitter labor negotiations in the MSO's history. She was strongly criticized by the musicians, both for her negotiating style and for her refusal to accept the same cut in her income that she was demanding of the musicians.

Montreal Symphony: Manager Resigns

Orchestre Symphony de Montreal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra) director general Robert Spickler has resigned from his position effective March 27, according to a notice posted backstage on the musicians' notice board. The notice said that he would address the orchestra at a later date regarding the reasons for his resignation.

National Endowment: Hollywood Poster Child

The National Endowment for the Arts was the cause du jour at the 67th annual Oscar award ceremony on March 27. Many participants in the awards ceremony, which is broadcast worldwide, wore lapel pins made of 2 32-cent stamps, representing the approximate annual cost of the NEA to the average taxpayer.

Arthur Hiller, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, opened the broadcast with a plea for continued funding of the NEA. He said that "a reduction in funding" for the NEA threatens "our culture and our history." He went on to say that the NEA guarantees that "in years to come, we in the Academy will still have excellence to reward." Quincy Jones and Martin Landau also spoke in favor of continued funding for the NEA in their acceptance speeches.

San Francisco Symphony: Black and White Brawl, Episode 3

The San Francisco Symphony and the City of Palo Alto, locked in a legal battle over the use of the name "Black and White Ball," seem to be searching for a way to end the dispute without going to court.

The orchestra, which has held its Black and White Ball, a major annual fundraiser, since 1956, registered the name with the federal government three years ago. It had threatened legal action against the city, which has held its own Black and White Ball, a fundraiser for the city's recreation department, for the past nine years. Since the orchestra registered the name, it has actively and successfully discouraged the use of the name by other organizations, such as the Atlanta Symphony, the Napa Valley Conference Visitor's Bureau, and the Marin Association of Realtors.

The orchestra had recently made a proposal to the city for the city to call its fundraiser "The Black and White Palo Alto Ball." On March 23, the city made a counterproposal to the orchestra: it proposed to call the affair "The Palo Alto Black and White Ball." A letter from city officials called the proposal a "happy solution [that is] surely preferable to litigation...which would most certainly, and unnecessarily, do permanent damage to the symphony's good reputation in the community."

Symphony Nova Scotia Runs Out of Money

The musicians of Symphony Nova Scotia in Halifax (Canada) are currently playing for free as the orchestra attempts to resolve a cash shortage. The Canada Council informed the orchestra on March 24 that it would not advance the remaining $214,000 left in next year's grant to the orchestra, after having advanced $166,000 earlier this season. This leaves the orchestra with a shortfall of $250,000 through April.

The Canada Council justified its action in a letter to SNS board president Van Pennick, in which Canada Council director Roch Carriere pointed out that the orchestra's accumulated deficit would be over $800,000 by the end of the season, 48% of the total projected revenue for the year.

At a free concert on March 26, the audience had pledged almost $2,000 to keep the orchestra going. The musicians' agreement to forego pay for the current week enables the orchestra to perform an already scheduled regional tour.

Deaths

Judy Ravan Moore Thomas, an Atlanta-area clarinetist who often played extra with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, died of cancer on March 22 at the age of 45.

Thomas also performed with the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra and other local professional groups.

The Atlanta Symphony held two "lounge days" during which musicians contributed $4,585 to the Players' Association to help defray Thomas' medical costs.

A septet of brass players from the Atlanta Symphony and Atlanta Brass performed at her funeral, which was attended by most of the members of the ASO and the classical freelance musicians in Atlanta.

Thomas is survived by her husband, Dr. Ed Thomas.
A. Raymond Lattanzio, a manager at International Business Systems who served as general manager of the San Jose Symphony from 1986-87, died on March 10 from complications resulting from a stroke. He was 69.

Lattanzio, who worked as a manager in IBM's litigation department and was also involved in the company's TOPS railroad operating system project, was loaned to the orchestra by IBM in 1986.

He is survived by his wife Marilyn, three sons, and a daughter.
Copyright 1995, International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians

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