And the Band Plays On

My father-in-law asked me to record the Minnesota Orchestra concert last Friday. He has Parkinsons and couldn't listen to the concert live. This presented a problem: I, like most everyone else, don't have a tape recorder any more.

So I had to dig around for the right cable and hook my receiver up to a computer and use Audacity to record the program, then export it as an MP3 file, which I burned to a CD.

The program, directed by laureate conductor Stanisław Skrowaczewski, included the Star-Spangled Banner, Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Strauss's Don Juan, and Beethoven's Third Symphony.

My father-in-law had subscribed to the Orchestra's concert series for decades. He's heard all this music a dozen times before. Why was this concert so special?

It was the first Minnesota Orchestra concert after a 16-month lockout. After spending $52 million dollars renovating Orchestra Hall, Michael Henson, CEO and president of the Minnesota Orchestra Association (MOA), thought there were too many players and they were making too much money.

Somehow Henson doesn't understand that standard orchestral repertoire, such as Mahler and Bruckner symphonies, can require more than a hundred players.  Like the emperor in Amadeus, I suppose Henson thinks there are too many notes.

These players are world-class musicians, having spent decades perfecting their art, and commanding top salaries, in the neighborhood of $100-200K. While that's much more than the average American's salary, it's typical for trained professionals: engineers and programmers in California make about the same, and many lawyers and doctors make far more.

During the grueling lockout the players of the Minnesota Orchestra put on their own concerts at university and college halls around the cities. They were always sold out. Throughout the Twin Cities you could find orange signs supporting the musicians. Never once did I see anyone voicing support for management.

Former US senator George Mitchell, who helped broker the peace accord in Northern Ireland, was brought in to negotiate, but management was recalcitrant.

Exactly how good was the Minnesota Orchestra before the lockout? It just won a Grammy for a recording of two Sibelius symphonies on the BIS label, which were made before the lockout. Osmo Vänskä, the orchestra's former music director, is the leading interpreter of Sibelius in the world.

A few months ago Vänskä gave management an ultimatum: end the lockout or he would resign. Henson continued to dawdle, so Vänskä followed through. When the Minneapolis city council started to make noises about taking Orchestra Hall away from the MOA because they weren't putting on concerts, Henson capitulated. The new contract gives the players a 15% salary cut in the first year, with raises in the next two. It was exactly the sort of contract the the musicians would have accepted the whole time.

The lockout cost the Minnesota Orchestra a recording contract, a tour in top concert venues in Europe, a conductor, 30-odd players who had to move on, millions in lost ticket sales and charitable contributions, its world-class reputation and much good will. It will take many years to recover.

This story has become typical in America. Lockouts have now become the main tactic of management. In 2012 the NHL locked the players out. In 2011 the NBA locked the players out, and the NFL did the same. The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra had a lockout in 2012. Companies have been using lockouts with increasing frequency, such as American Crystal Sugar, which locked out employees for years, and Kellogg cereals.

But the orchestra and sports lockouts are stunningly stupid, because the players are the product. Management can't step in and play the instruments or throw the football, and scabs are the ones who just don't make the cut. World-class musicians aren't interchangeable gears that just plug into the lowest rungs of the orchestra association's org chart.

The Minnesota Orchestra spent $52 million to upgrade Orchestra Hall, only to have it stand empty for a year and a half. Meanwhile, the players staged their own concerts around town, raising more than half a million dollars on their own.

There have been numerous calls for Osmo Vänskä to return. He has stated that he will not come back unless CEO Michael Henson resigns.

Even if Vänskä doesn't come back, Henson has to go. He has demonstrated massive managerial incompetence and a destructively antagonistic attitude toward the artists that are the very product he is trying to sell. What decent conductor would work for a man like Henson?

To top it off, Henson is paid the big bucks: he got a $200K bonus in 2011, for a total of $619K in the year before the lockout. In 2012 he received $589,416, which was almost 2% of the orchestra's expenses, even though the musicians were locked out for the last three months of the year! Someone so incompetent has no right to that job, especially since the orchestra is a non-profit charity!

At more than half a mil, Henson is well-entrenched as a one-percenter. He seems to consider himself one of the elite, rubbing elbows with fellow one-percenters constantly, hitting them up for contributions. Like too many of that ilk, he seems to have made it his life's work to cut everyone else's salary while raising his own. Corporate hacks might be able to sell that line of bull to shareholders, but the CEO of a charitable organization needs to get a clue.

Henson -- like so many CEOs -- just doesn't understand that he's the one that's completely disposable: without musicians an empty hall stands silent; without a CEO the band plays on.