My step-cousin Scott Chamberlain, classical music and organization blogger, sees the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra management board try to reach the low standards he’s already generously set for them … and not make it. Scott is referencing an email from FWSO President and CEO Adkins to other members of the board:
And finally there comes a slanderous grand finale—an attack that calls out a private citizen by name, and then drags that person’s good name through the mud. Ms. Adkins quotes outside sources to imply that one of the people reaching out to the FWSO board members was mentally disturbed, a stalker, and probably dangerous. Don’t like the message? Smear the messenger.
The problem is… every bit of Ms. Adkins’s attack is completely false. For one, the “lawyers” that Ms. Adkins uses to support her accusations don’t exist. They are entirely fictitious. No one with either of those names practices law in the state of Minnesota. No one with either of those names has served on the board of Minnesota Orchestra.
I mean, this is bizarre. It took me all of three minutes on the Internet to show that these “lawyers” were completely made up, and the site Ms. Adkins referenced was a fraud.
But I didn’t even have to do the digging myself. Andrew Patner, the late music critic who wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote about his experience with these very same “lawyers” here, and elaborated on dealing with these Internet fakes many times, in many locations. He also references the work of a Denver writer who wrote extensively about his concerns about this fraudulent website. This information is certainly available to the general public.
Ms. Adkins’ bio, as published in D Magazine on the occasion of her election to the FWSO Presidency, is here. You can have valid differences of opinion, but there’s a line that’s crossed when fraud occurs. If the letter containing the fraudulent information is authentic, and the fraud is real, it should then be clear that she’s no longer functioning at a high enough level to belong on the board. While her service to the FWSO is admirable, it appears she’s gone around the bend…
