How often do you get to reprimand a world-class conductor? Not very often, so Scott Chamberlain takes advantage of the opportunity to school Leonard Slatkin, albeit using pre-reviews of Slatkin’s new book, rather than the actual source material:
“Slatkin criticizes management and musicians about equally in his overview. The former remained quiet for too long about its mounting financial troubles, and the latter failed to pose early questions about funding when times were flush.”
The fact that years later we still have to knock down these casually-made, false equivalencies is, quite honestly, mind-boggling. For what I hope is the last time, there is no equivalency here.
Let’s dig in. The Orchestra’s previous management didn’t “remain quiet” about mounting financial troubles—they actively engaged in a wide-ranging disinformation campaign directed at the musicians, the community, the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota’s State Legislature, and beyond. This isn’t me just being mean saying this, this was abundantly documented during the lockout, and clearly documented in the Orchestra’s actual board minutes. For example, when the Orchestra leadership was approaching the State Legislature to secure bonding money to refurbish Orchestra Hall, it shaded the numbers to create the appearance balanced budgets and overall fiscal health. Then, on the eve of contract negotiations with the musicians, management shaded the finances in a different way to report a large deficit and make it seem that financial collapse was imminent.
Along with this, management lied about the size of the reported deficit. This wasn’t an accident… in 2011, the board retained the public-relations firm Padilla Speer Beardsley to determine “what size of deficit to report publicly.” Once it determined the optimum number, leadership manipulated its fundraising, expenditures and draws from the endowment to match this pre-determined number. And that was the origin of the $6 million deficit the management kept toting. …
The musicians—along with everyone else—were actively lied to. Repeatedly. Over many years. Which is why the public, local government, state government, and funders reacted so harshly. The two sides are not equivalent.
And so on. Scott makes clear that the lockout model of arts organization finance is a failure – and Slatkin’s equivocation is incorrect.
