Posted by Barry Guerrero on January 24, 2003 at 18:12:16:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Houston Symphony Cutting Jobs, Salaries posted by Jay Bertolet on January 24, 2003 at 17:13:47:
Jay,
What amazes me, is that people talk about these situations as though they are somehow a good thing. Whether the musicians are partly to blame themselves or not, it's not a good situation. From that standpoint, fellow musicians should lend their support, I think. I'm not talking about gettng involved politically, but instead, perhaps a simple, "gee, I'm sorry to hear about that, man", might be more appropriate than a lot of double guessing. Personally speaking, I'm really tired and bored with all of the, "change is good", and "change is inevitable" blather. Change is change, pure and simple - some of it's good, and some of it sucks. No one should worship change simply because someone else tells you that it's inevitable - that's Orwellian, to my mind.
The second thing that bothers me is the, "supply and demand" argument. We're not talking about a town of 100,000 - we're talking about a huge city! If a city of a least a millon people can not, or will not support a professional symphony orchestra, then something else is really wrong - maybe how it goes about raising funds, and/or how it attracts a new audience, perhaps?
I believe that the Houston Symphony is an even older orchestra than the S.F. Symphony (correct me if I'm wrong about that), but S.F. is a greatly more expensive city than Houston. Yet, the S.F. Symphony has been something of a success story over the last 30 years or so. Why? What makes the difference? At the same time, an old professional orchestra 50 miles south of S.F. closed up last year (San Jose). I'm not sure all the reasons why, so there have to be a number of factors involved in these situations. In the case of San Jose, I assure you that the musicians were not overpaid in a relative sense.
Barry Guerrero