by Robin McKee, Associate Principal Flute
It's London, first stop overseas on our tour with MTT. Melatonin is helping
me sleep. Fighting the crowds at Harrod's and the Tate Gallery is helping
me adjust to the new time zone (8 hours later than San Francisco).
This town is so cool...way too much to see and do in our short stay. Besides,
we've got to pace ourselves very carefully, as it's going to be a long concert
at the Barbican Centre.
The towns on this concert tour are fabulous sightseeing towns, great concert
towns, wonderful restaurant towns: London, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Vienna.
This town *should* be an exciting and fulfilling musical experience, but
there is such a black cloud hanging above it all.
The uncertainty of the outcome of our contract negotiations is a real pain
in the neck...literally. Several of us have *had* stiff necks on this tour.
As a matter of fact, there have been no talks on tour or immediately before.
The San Francisco Symphony management refuses to discuss anything. Go figure...
So what can we do? We can pass out leaflets at the concerts. In San Francisco,
we've been keeping our audiences informed of this dilemma since September.
It's a weird thing that's happening with the symphony orchestras in the
United States. There seems to be a movement amongst managers to turn orchestras
into corporations. We musicians are now in the "orchestra department"
of the San Francisco Symphony. But I digress.
In New York City, we had to stand in the rain, away from the Carnegie Hall
awning while passing out leaflets; at the Barbican Centre in London the
hall manager got the leaflets from backstage, led us out to the front where
the tickets are sold, and told us the best places to stand. Whew, what a
difference!
The audience members were very kind, though some couldn't understand my
American accent. People would stop and chat, say that they have seen us
in San Francisco. Some asked what they could do to help us, some wished
us luck in our endeavors. Such gracious people they were. We had been warned
that people would laugh at us, no one would be interested in our situation,
our "labor disputes." That certainly was not my experience with
the concertgoers of London. But there's always Paris...
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