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#773 – Dick Bernard: The Minnesota Orchestra, Facing Armageddon, and "A Man's Reach"

Outside Orchestra Hall, Sep 6, 2013

Outside Orchestra Hall, Sep 6, 2013


The Minnesota Orchestra Managements full page ad in the Sunday Minneapolis Star Tribune ominously said: “Eight days left….”
Today is Thursday. That must mean there are four days left, which means next Monday is the day.
According to the folks who approved the copy for the ad, anyway.
I wonder how I’d vote, if in the Orchestra, 11 months locked out, having had to subsist with other than Orchestra pay or benefits, faced with an offer which at this point can only be one to save face for Orchestra Management.
Sharks don’t do deals, other than to win….
There is less question how I’d vote as a locked out patron, who didn’t have an opportunity to use any of my 2012-13 season tickets.
Of course, we patrons (aka audience, listeners) appear to not much matter.
For this single listener, the end of the Orchestra as we knew it happened back in January, 2013; but the beginning of the end probably began over a small lunch or dinner at a fancy restaurant somewhere back around the near collapse of our economy in 2008, five Septembers ago, when a few powerful people shared some ideas about making the Big Dreams they had into reality. There is, after all, great profit to be made from adversity, if you know how to play the money game. And there are different definitions of “profit”, too.
There are probably some scribbled ideas on sheets of paper somewhere about
how to exploit a near economic catastrophe as an excuse, in other words.
Or, perhaps there is no definable “ground zero”. It just evolved.
I speak as a single audience member, simply a long term account number at the Minnesota Orchestra (who seems, to my knowledge, to have been ‘disappeared’ from the Orchestra managements ordinary communication network.)
For some time now I have said, including more than once in this and other blogposts, that I’ll return to Orchestra Hall if and only if the Musicians Union ratifies a new contract. (This does not mean a “kick the can down the road” temporary agreement.)
But even if I’m back, the reality remains: without major changes in how business is done at Orchestra Management level, including who is permitted to be on the Board, the new Orchestra Hall will be a monument to failure of management and not to success.
To me, the Minnesota Orchestra of 110 years has been killed.
*
There are many models (mindsets, I’ll call them) which could have been followed to avoid this pending Armageddon.
Just for perspective, here are a couple of examples, compared against the current apparent model:
A. Alan Fletcher, President and CEO of the Aspen Music School and Festival, said this on June 23, 2013: “Classical music in the United States depends on four groups working together: musicians, donors, administrators, and listeners.” Two months later he said similarly, across the street from Orchestra Hall.
There is at least an implication in his remarks that these four components have essentially equal value.
B. As those of us in the audience now know, the Minnesota Orchestra Management has (and may have always had) a different model:
1) administrators/large donors/Board;
2) musicians;
3) listeners/audience;

with the administrators/large donors superior; and the listeners (it now appears) essentially irrelevant except to purchase tickets.
This model worked so long as there was a benevolent donor class which believed in great music for the greater community played by a top tier Orchestra conducted by a top tier music director.
Wealthy opportunists who like music but like power and control even more apparently saw their opportunity to take over the Orchestra, and have done so, and here we are.
C. And there’s a third model, which Board member Harvey Mackays “Swim with the Sharks” book caused me to revisit this week.
The alternative is in “A Man’s Reach” by Elmer L. Andersen (edited by Lori Sturdevant, University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
Mr. Andersen would be well known to any of the “players” on the current Orchestra Board: orphan who loved books and learning; well to do and very successful business owner, life-long Republican, MN political and civic leader, including Governor and UofM Board of Regents, philanthropist, on and on.
We were friends the last 12 years of his life.
In his book, pages 96-100, Mr. Andersen describes his “corporate philosophy” which “was built around four priorities in a definite order.”
1) “Our highest priority…should be service to the customer.”
2) “Number two was that the company [H. B. Fuller] should exist deliberately for the benefit of the people associated in it. I never like the word employee. It intimated a difference in class within a plant.”
3) [H.B.] “Fuller’s third priority was to make money.”
4) “Our philosophy did not leave out service to the larger community. We put it in fourth place….”

Mr. Andersen died in 2004. It would be interesting to hear Mr. Andersen and Mr. Mackay et al discuss the word “customer” in context with the Minnesota Orchestra.
There is, in my opinion, a severe distinction and disconnect between Mr. Mackay’s “Shark” approach to business and Andersen’s “A Man’s Reach” philosophy, and the distinction is on display at 1111 Nicollet Avenue now.
Mr. Andersen can’t engage in this conversation, at least directly. I wonder what he and many of his other contemporaries – former pillars of this community – would have to say.
Four days. My best to the parties.
The Listeners will determine the future.
A Man's Reach, c. Regents of the University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 2000

A Man’s Reach, c. Regents of the University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 2000

#762 – Dick Bernard: Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out. What's ahead?

UPDATE: August 21, 2013: This important link forwarded by John B, received from “my niece, an attorney in Albuquerque. She once worked for the MN Orch Youth Symphony and is a cello player from St. Olaf.”
August 24, 2013: In the 23rd Star Tribune an article appeared on page B3 of the Metro Section giving management site on the Domain name issue (referred to in the above link). The article did not appear in the on-line edition, at least was not found, but is now accessible. Here is the STrib link. Here is a pdf of the actual article in yesterdays Star Tribune: Orch Domain names001
The musicians website: here
Previous posts about the Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out: October 18, 2012; December 7, 2012; June 1, 2013; June 5, 2013; June 21, 2013; July 26, 2013; August 16, 2013; August 19, 2013.
When I began blogging in March, 2009, I had no idea what would evolve. Over the years, I’ve obviously been prolific. I’ve also noted that I’m eclectic – I am interested in lots of things, some passionately, and sometimes topics take root, like the Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out, now near a year old.
We went to the Community Forum about the future of the Minnesota Orchestra, sponsored by Orchestrate Excellence, last night, and I included a brief report and the links to the video and the handout here. I would urge taking the time to access both handout and video, and I would also suggest joining Orchestrate Excellence network (click on “Join the Coalition” tab). Orchestrate Excellence seems to be reasonable folks with an objective of keeping our World Class Orchestra intact, and finding some way to settlement.
I know collective bargaining all too well: it was my job for 27 years. My colleagues and I worked in diverse ways with thousands of collective bargaining negotiations and agreements in that time. We dealt with upsets, small and large, and occasional strikes (really pretty rare). Never do I recall a Lock-Out, and certainly no Strike that lasted anywhere near as long as this Lock Out has prevailed. The geniuses who devised and sold the Lock-Out strategy give meaning to a favorite country-western tune of mine: “What was I Thinking”.
But…that’s what they thought, and the way these situations often times go, once committed to a strategy, one follows it till death. And that’s the scary part of this conflict. The longer this Lock-Out has continued, the harder the cement in which feet are planted, and the bar for a “win” gets higher and higher. On the Union side, there’s nothing left to lose; on Management, a single-minded focus on destroying the Union. Very, very unhealthy.
We arrived early enough last evening to give me time to walk around the block and see the now infamous Lobby. I took a few photos.
(click to enlarge photos)

Orchestra Hall Lobby, Minneapolis, August 20, 2013

Orchestra Hall Lobby, Minneapolis, August 20, 2013


It was more than a little ironic, seeing “Orchestra Hall” on the side of the building, since the musicians who make up the Orchestra have been locked out without pay or benefits since October, 2012. And, of course, with the absent Orchestra, similarly locked out have been those of us who are called “Listeners”, the “Audience”.
As I walked down Nicollet Ave I noted through the window of the still-incomplete lobby a single step-ladder being used for something. Step-ladders are useful tools for achieving a goal.
I wondered what “step-ladder” exists to end the War at 1111 Nicollet Mall. A one-sided “victory” will be a Pyrrhic one, with no good end. Perhaps that Pyhrric event has already occurred. I hope not.
In our small group last night, I made a couple of comments which tend to summarize my feelings at this point in time:
1. The settlement will have to be made by the two parties to the bargain, the Orchestra Management and Orchestra itself.
2. As for us, the Locked Out audience, each of us in our own way need to do something; and that something should be a bit beyond our normal self-imposed limit. We can’t afford to sit on the sidelines. The ball is in our court. Last night was an excellent organized kickoff bringing together people of diverse opinions, all who care deeply about the future of our Minnesota Orchestra.
August 21, 2013

August 21, 2013


August 21, 2013

August 21, 2013


Comments:
from Mike R, Aug 20:

Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Dick.
We heard about the forum on KSJN and were wondering if it would help.
I have no confidence that MN Orch management bargains in good faith. What does your experience with labor negotiations tell you?
From Will S, Aug 21: Nobody knows what to do, not even my classical musician friends.
Nobody can tell us specifically what to do. They just don’t know.
It will play out by itself until someone comes up with a specific proposal to present to the governor and the Legislature and copy the public.
Response from Dick: This is a time for innovation. There’s nothing worse than doing nothing! Innovate.
from Cathy A, Aug 21: I was there [at the Forum] as well and inspired by the #s that showed up — but nothing in the newspaper this morning!
There will be a lot of PR work when (if) this thing is settled. I appreciate your comments and efforts.
from John B, Aug 21:
Is Minneapolis (and Minnesota ) becoming a cultural Detroit?
I’d like to see the comparison of salaries for the Viking players and the MN orchestra players.
What about the governmental financial subsidies for the MN Orch and the Vikings Stadium, etc.
Dick, you are correct in my opinion. The lockout is union busting, pure and simple!
From Molly R, Aug 21: Thanks, Dick. Fyi, this article up on MNPost today, too.
From John G, Aug 21: Dick, taking a stance of neutrality can have (and has been known to have) the opposite effect: namely, pressuring labor to cave in to management. I
hope that Orchestrate Excellence is being very careful to avoid that outcome. Fletcher’s one insistence that the lockout end unconditionally is his signal to the Board that there must be a level playing field for starters, or so it seems to me. Now is the moment, perhaps the last moment, for the MO Board, filled with leaders in our community, to take courage enough to initiate this way out of a debacle that our world-class Minnesota Orchestrate does not deserve. If Senator Mitchell can help pull this one out of the fire, he will have crowned his distinguished career with a historic last-minute “save” (with thanks for your contributions to a win/win).
From Vicci J, Aug 22 (retired music educator in St. Paul MN): Hi Dick, just read your blog, and here are a few comments.
Audience development to uphold the economy of arts tourism, is a state-wide and on-going generational project in all K-12 schools.
It will take 20 years to turn the MN Orchestra around, because it took 20 year for its demise. Today the MN Orchestra, as all major orchestras, need to payroll lobbyists capable of influencing legislatures to maintain the funding of music education programs.
In fact the only definitive insurance the arts tourism economy has, is arts programs in K-12 schools. So where are the lobbyists for music education?
Funding to school music programs was systematically cut, gradually, starting in the 1980s. If any one wants specific documentation regarding the politics of these cuts, read “The Manufactured Crisis” by Biddle and Berliner.” The proof is in the research and numbers.
A perfect K-12 program looks close to this:
Elementary School: Early Kodaly or Solfeggio in grades Pre-K-3. Maintain in classroom vocal music through grade 6.
In grade 3 start Suzuki strings; in grade 4 start wind instruments.
With early music education, in grade 3, students can read music, hear pitch differences and sing in-tune. In grade three, students are now physically ready to hold string instruments, and in grade 4, large enough to blow into a wind instrument.
These instrumental programs are scheduled in (a minimum of) 30-minute half hour, during school, pull-out-of class-lessons, with up to 4 instruments that are alike. To maintain National Standards in Music Education, there would need to be 2 such pull out classes per week. When students reach the end of their first year, a full rehearsal is added once a week.
This continues through grades 4-5-6.
Junior High: Students move into junior high: elective classes in choral; band; or orchestra classes.
Senior High: Students have elective classes, several academic levels, of band, orchestra, choral, and music classes. And lots of public performances.
This is how a community-city-state, develops a generational audience base for any major arts organization such as the MN Orchestra.
To A New Beginning: The Twin Cites Arts Tourism Economy is on the down-slide, and fewer young family’s will consider moving to Minnesota unless the public becomes vocal to state and city government officials about funding K-12 music education.
Governor Dayton has returned some funds to the education budget, but not enough to instantly repair the economic damage that has been done to both orchestras. Minnesota needs a brigade of arts lobbyists to accomplish this.
Who will find and hire them if not the arts venues?
from Alan S. Aug 23: I recently received an e-mail request from the Manager of Individual Giving for a donation to the Minnesota Orchestra Guaranty Fund. I believe that the people that are in management positions with what was once a great orchestra are now so far from reality that they as managers don’t begin to understand what they have virtually wrecked by locking out the people that made the music. The Director has already given his date that he will resign, quite a few of the musicians have left for other orchestras, and the management is looking for donations like they want to be rewarded for what they have done?
ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS FROM DICK BERNARD ON AUGUST 22, 2013:
Tuesday night, after Allen Fletcher’s talk, we were in a randomly selected group of 13 people to discuss the two questions in the Orchestrate Excellence handout (link above). All of the other participants were, presumably, in similar kinds of groups as ours: just ordinary folks talking.
I was aware, and I am aware, that few people are very aware of even the basics of collective bargaining. As for me, all the assorted aspects of collective bargaining were my full-time job for 27 years, and myself and my colleagues dealt with, literally, thousands of collective bargaining agreements.
I know collective bargaining.
Bargaining is, in my opinion, more than anything else, about relationships between people.
Here are some comments I heard within my own small group, and my interpretation of them. These are strictly my thoughts, based on my own experience:
1. Is there any analogy to an ordinary persons life in the present Lock-Out of the Orchestra? I think there is such an analogy: it’s called a divorce. Most all of us have either experienced a troubled marriage, or know well someone who has. Now, assume one partner has all of the temporal power: the money, the cars, the decision making authority; while the other party has all of the talent and most of the friends in the neighborhood. Mr. Fletcher, as I recall, described such an “asymmetric” relationship, where the Orchestral Association has everything; and the Orchestra members have nothing at all, except many friends who feel completely powerless to do anything.
Let’s say that right before Court, the parties agree to reconcile, to settle. Assume the asymmetric couple I just described above. How will this work if/when the impasse is broken, by whatever means, through whomevers influence.
Even most optimistically, this will be an extraordinarily difficult reconciliation.
2. Someone in our group said that Board members had ponied up $4,000,000 to essentially save the Orchestra. Don’t they deserve some sympathy? This is interesting, and the immediate response would be “yes”. But…this is a number without any definition whatsoever. It is just a number tossed out.
Assuming that the number is accurate and its use correctly identified (not safe assumptions, but let’s assume they are), there are about 80 members on the Orchestra Board. This would mean about $50,000 per Board member. Board members are basically “high net worth” people to begin with: that would be a normal criteria for nominating Board members to a large non-profit. It would take, at maximum, $1,000,000 of idle money to generate $50,000 a year, without ever touching the principal. And such a donation would presumably be tax deductible. It would take roughly 200 six-performance listeners to generate the same revenue, and such revenue would not be deductible.
In addition, an aggravation for me, which I expressed within the small group, is that, to my knowledge, we listeners were never asked nor informed about the change in orchestra direction, nor the supposed financial crisis. We listeners are a massive non-entity to the decision makers, except to the extent that we provide revenue.
3. Why doesn’t the Union just make a counter-proposal, even if locked out? This is a labor law problem that the vast majority of individuals would not understand, but that the Union bargainers are fully aware of. Orchestral Management would love to have such a proposal. My understanding of this is it would make breaking the Union even simpler. One of the very clear messages from Fletcher in his talk was that the Board needed to unilaterally end the Lock-out to make any settlement possible.
4. Why don’t we adopt some new model (i.e. musician representatives on the Board), etc? There are different models of governance. Unfortunately, we are stuck with the current labor-management model until after the current situation is settled. Some would like to fire the entire Board. I’m sure some would like to just get rid of the Union. Both have some logic. But both are crazy ideas. This is not normal labor-management relationships, and we’re stuck with the status quo until there is some kind of settlement, however that settlement looks. I can’t even speak intelligently about which management should be fired: the Orchestral Association Board activities do not seem open to public view. Imagine a local school board whose members were inaccessible to the public, and unaccountable to the public. Essentially, this seems to be the current Orchestral Association management.
5. What can I do? At one point in the small group, somebody asked how many people we had in our personal networks, and how we could work together. If I recall correctly, he said he knew about 15. I said my network was about the same (though this writing will go to a core group now including about 30 people). I don’t recall anyone else commenting on this. As an audience, a group of listeners, we are fragmented, and it is difficult to break this fragmentation – we know the people who we’ve come to know in our section of the auditorium, or others we know have been at one or another Orchestra event, but no one else.
The only remedy I can see to this is to plod along, by bits and pieces, creating a network for the future.
We didn’t plan to this crisis (which we didn’t know was about to happen), so we can feel justified in pleading ignorance. But we can no longer plead ignorance.
6. But I don’t know what to do? In the group, I said I had only two pieces of advice: 1) do something; 2) stretch yourself (I mention them both in the original post, above.)
Doing nothing, being defeated, assures only defeat. We can do a great deal, in many different and creative ways. From now on, IF I return to Orchestra Hall, the Orchestral Association Board is not going to be allowed to be anonymous and unaccountable.

#761 – Dick Bernard: A Full Moon, Pretty Flowers…and owning a mistake

UPDATE, August 20, 2013 9:45 p.m.
A short while ago we drove east from Minneapolis, driving into the Full Moon rising. The sky was clear and the view was spectacular. Pity that I only had my small camera, with which I took this snapshot. The moon was, for me at least, a positive harbinger of the future for the Minnesota Orchestra.
(click to enlarge)

Full Moon, August 20, 2013, at Woodbury MN

Full Moon, August 20, 2013, at Woodbury MN


We had just attended, along with several hundred others, a Community Forum on the Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out. The extraordinarily well run event was conducted by an apparent ad hoc organization, Orchestrate Excellence, and co-featured a keynote speech by Dr. Alan Fletcher, CEO and President of the Aspen Music Festival and School, and a large number of moderated small groups, largely of strangers together, dealing with two questions:
1. Does Minnesota want a world-class orchestra, and why?
2. What will you, as a community member, do to support a world-class orchestra, and how?
Dr. Fletcher’s talk is available at The UpTake and is well worth your time.
The handout we all received is here: OrchExcel 082013001
We thought our time to be very well spent. Ours was a diverse group, 13 of us, with diverse opinions, but we were talking.
If you have even a little interest in the Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out do take time to print out the handout, and watch the video, and enter into your own conversations within your own circles.
Personally, I think tonights meeting, along with other events recent and pending, mitigate towards a settlement, which must be between the two parties to the bargain. If I’m right, the settlement of the contract will only begin the hard part: to move ahead to heal and rebuild.
It won’t be easy.
Tonights full moon was, I found out, a Blue Moon. I’m not much of a moon person, but I liked its rising as we came home this evening. For some reason it brought a feeling of hope.
Here’s the earlier post….
Bergeson Nursery rural Fertile MN August 8, 2013

Bergeson Nursery rural Fertile MN August 8, 2013


This day this blogspace was to be about pretty flowers in a wonderful pastoral setting about 300 miles from our home in the Twin Cities!. Our tour guides on August 8 were Annelee Woodstrom, and her friend, Joyce Schlagel, who suggested we drive from their home in Ada to the Bergeson Nursery in rural Fertile MN.
The afternoon was a huge treat, and I posted 22 snapshots in this Facebook album. If you can’t access them, I’ve sprinkled two photos from the pastoral farmyard within this post.
At Bergeson Nursery August 8, 2013

At Bergeson Nursery August 8, 2013


Flowers can speak for themselves, but they speak as well for those who nurture them.
More compelling to me, right now, is the continuing tragedy of the Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out, nearing twelve months, with the next two weeks crucial.
I need to start by correcting a mistake I made in my August 16 Post. It is marked by [*] in the third paragraph, and acknowledged in the last two paragraphs. It was a foolish mistake, that I had no reason to make. I apologize.
Of course, mistakes do not begin and end with me.
One of the more memorable dissertations on owning a mistake is one I heard years ago, at a meeting, where a woman quoted her mother: “never apologize”. Nothing more was said about why the Mom said that to her daughter, at the time long an adult, but it stuck.
This morning I reviewed my entire Lock Out file. It is a couple of inches thick, my personal reference point for this disaster. It includes my letters to the Board: Nov. 24, 2012, to every Board member; Jan. 10, 2013, to the Officers; Feb. 18, 2013 to the Executive Committee.
There is one reply which seems genuine, dated Jan. 8, 2013, from Jon R. Campbell and Michael Henson, but it is just too perfect. It reminds me far too much of a letter I received about 1965 from a downtown Minneapolis office. I had been raising a complaint about some small and (in my mind) unjustified bill, and finally got a long letter, typed in the fashion of the day, with the salutation “Dear Richard I. Bernard (or anybody else)”. With that, I paid the bill, satisfied I got somebody’s attention.
The Lock Out of the Orchestra by Orchestra management was a horrendous mistake, and the “never apologize” rule is likely to be applied here by those same managers whenever this issue is over.
But sooner or later there will be a settlement, hopefully not imposed, and my signal to begin supporting the Orchestra once again will be an enthusiastic ratification of the agreement by members of the Orchestra Union.
They are, all of them, heroes to me.
It is time for a beautiful sunrise out of a stormy sky, such as the one I saw this morning enroute to coffee, and hurriedly snapped.
Sunrise August 19, 2013, Woodbury MN near corner of Radio and Lake.

August 19, 2013, Woodbury MN near corner of Radio and Lake.


Previous posts about the Minnesota Orchestra Lock-Out: October 18, 2012; December 7, 2012; June 1, 2013; June 5, 2013; June 21, 2013; July 26, 2013; August 16, 2013

#752 – Dick Bernard: "Detroit". The Minnesota Orchestra as Metaphor

Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vanska February 3, 2013, performing a portion of their Grammy nominated performance, here.

Locked Out Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra Concert Oct 18, 2012, with Maestro Skrowaczewski

Locked Out Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra Concert Oct 18, 2012, with Maestro Skrowaczewski


July 23 and 24 I did two posts related to “Detroit” (see them here and here.) I put “Detroit” in quotes, since the word itself has become a useful hate word, a label: “look at THEM, failures…”
The issue, of course, is who “THEM” is defined as being.
The battle lines are now drawn, as to whose fault “Detroit” is: Capitalism itself; or the poor people of Detroit who, it is suggested, lacked the good judgement to have their city efficiently run by…Capitalists. I’ll let that debate rage on.
Meanwhile, here at home, largely unnoticed, the Minnesota Orchestra ten month Lock-Out by management (it is NOT a strike, as some suggest), is at a crisis stage. A Big Dog, George Mitchell, has been engaged to attempt to mediate a settlement within the next month or so. It is impossible to guess the outcome. But the conflict is in the news again, thankfully.
Disclosure: I’m a longtime Minnesota Orchestra fan and subscriber – a “listener” who pays plenty of money every year to hear world-class music in Minneapolis. Here’s my position, filed June 21 and occasionally updated since then.
So, what does Minnesota Orchestra have to do with “Detroit”?

More than a bit, I suggest.
The Twin Cities has been my home since 1965. And it has been a place to be proud of, a “Major League City” of over 3,000,000 residents.
“Major League”, of course, means Major League Basketball (1947), Football (1960), Baseball (1961), Hockey (1967), and Women’s Basketball (1999), and probably some other sports I’m not aware of.
In the Twin Cities, we apparently take “Major League” seriously.
And long before those sports, there’s been Major League Music, first known as the Minneapolis Symphony (1903, later renamed Minnesota Orchestra in 1988), whose last concert as an orchestra was over a year ago, and whose new “stadium”, a remodeled Orchestra Hall, particularly a fabulous new lobby, is supposed to open in September, perhaps without an Orchestra.
This Minnesota Orchestra, locked out, has been known as one of America’s five top tier Orchestra’s: the Minnesota, New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago Symphonies.
Minnesota’s “Detroit” has come to be the unresolved dispute at the Minnesota Orchestra, and it is useful to consider the implications of the potential loss to this community if the Orchestra is downgraded.
Alan Fletcher, President and CEO of the prestigious Aspen Music Festival, on June 24, 2013, defined the four key players in an orchestra as follows: “musicians, donors, administrators, and listeners”. (His entire remarks are here. Note especially the three paragraphs beginning “Classical music in…”. He will be speaking here, in Minneapolis, across the street from Orchestra Hall on August 20. Details here.)
Of the four groups, I have been “listener” since 1978, and a small additional “donor” for quite a number of years. I gave when asked. (“Donors” in Fletcher’s context probably refers to the mega-buck folks who donate millions to the Orchestra endowment; “Listeners”, on the other hand, are the ones who fill the seats and pay substantial money for the privilege.)
In this four-cornered “quartet”, it occurred to me, it is the “listeners” who were not so much as asked for their opinion. Perhaps I missed the memo, but I do pay attention to such things.
And it is we listeners who pay a good share of the ongoing bills; the endowment from “donors” is a savings account, the nest egg to be used to help out for things like building the mega-bucks new lobby which, apparently, is more important than the music inside the hall.
In the case of the Minnesota Orchestra, it seems to me, it was the Administration, the big people unknown to listeners like me, who made all of the decisions that have put me and my colleague listeners out on the street for an entire year.
Sooner or later, this conflict will be settled – they always are. I reiterate what I said June 21: “I have taken my stand, as a listener: Until the Minnesota Orchestra Musicians, through their Union, encourage me to return to Orchestra Hall or to Orchestra programs, I will not pay for nor attend any event at Minnesota Orchestra Hall, nor any other event scheduled by the current management or Board of the Orchestral Association.”
I may be just a “grain of sand”. But I am that….

October 18, 2012

October 18, 2012


July 27, 2013, The Lobby from 11th street...

July 27, 2013, The Lobby from 11th street…


...and from 12th Street

…and from 12th Street

#735 – Dick Bernard: to the Audience (Listeners) of the Minnesota Orchestra

Ongoing Updates:
New blog post July 26, 2013: here
From a reader June 23: Do you think your readers are aware of [the website] Orchestrate Excellence?
From a June 21, comment (below): “The US has 5 “top-tier” orchestras, Minnesota, New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago.”
Another excellent website: Song of the Lark
Two commentaries noted in an e-mail received July 10, 2013: Alan Fletcher, Pres and CEO of Aspen Music Festival and School, June 24, 2013m and Euan Kerr, Minnesota Public Radio, July 3, 2013.
UPDATE July 2, 2013: Minneapolis Star Tribune page B2 – Orchestra to return nearly $1 M in state grant money
There are several comments to this blog post at the end of the post, the most recent June 26.
UPDATE July 10, 2013:
Monday afternoon, July 8, I was on I-94, returning home after several days of visiting in my home state of North Dakota.
I needed some sounds to break the silence of the solitary drive, and near Sauk Centre I checked the small cache of CDs I keep for such occasions. Up popped Reveries, a CD recorded by the Minnesota Orchestra at Orchestra Hall under Maestro Eiji Oue, May 1 and 2, 2002. So, as I drove through Lake Wobegon country, I listened to the gentle, magnificent music of the Minnesota Orchestra…
(continued after the last comment, below)
*
Minnesota Orchestra Musicians Video.
Minnesota Orchestra Musicians Negotiations FAQ/strong>
Minnesota Orchestra Board of Directors here
. Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis MN 55403. Directors listed at the end of this post.
The below post has been selected for inclusion in MinnPosts June 21 MN Blog Cabin Roundup
*
Today is the Summer Solstice, the longest day for the 364 days prior and the 364 days to follow. For those of us who love the Minnesota Orchestra it’s been a very long year, and all that is ahead is uncertainty.
I’m one of those who each year have filled the seats at Orchestra Hall. We’ve all been dis-enfranchised by the near one year Lock Out of the Musicians and the Audience by the Minnesota Orchestra Management.
When this Lock Out ends, as it will be, some day, even if soon, it will take years, if ever, for the Orchestra to recover. How do you rebuild a proud ensemble of gifted artists you’ve just destroyed? I won’t accept, “all good. Sure the Union is history, but let’s be friends again….”, or the like. There has been, likely, irreparable harm, and not just within the Orchestra itself.
What’s one to do? In my view, we audience members don’t reward the bad behavior of the Orchestra Board and it’s management by quietly accepting what is happening.
I invite you to join me, as individuals who enjoyed the Minnesota Orchestra, to act.
Here’s what I’m going to do: Until the Minnesota Orchestra Musicians, through their Union, encourage me to return to Orchestra Hall or to Orchestra programs, I will not pay for nor attend any event at Minnesota Orchestra Hall, nor any other event scheduled by the current management or Board of the Orchestral Association.
I speak solely as an individual…a single “grain of sand”.
As a group of individuals, we can make a big difference.

The packet of tickets for the Lost Season of 2012-13, Minnesota Orchestra.

The packet of tickets for the Lost Season of 2012-13, Minnesota Orchestra.


About those of us who have looked forward to performances of the Minnesota Orchestra:
We represent a small chunk of Minnesotans. Most people don’t identify with the Orchestra as a community asset, so this tragedy is an easy issue for the public to ignore. We as audience must act. The issue is in our court.
The Orchestra and its audience are inseparable. Apparently an average of 1600 of us have filled the seats. Together we are immensely powerful. The Orchestra has been an important part of this communities quality of life for more than a century and it has been recognized for its quality world wide. We are part of this Orchestra’s success, and potentially party to its failure if we don’t take a stand.
We weren’t part of the problem; nonetheless we have to be part of the solution.
We are well advised to be very skeptical of “true” “facts” as conveyed through the traditional means: mailings from the Orchestra management; the downtown Minneapolis structure, including the Star Tribune, etc.
About me:
1. Best as I can recall, I first attended a Minnesota Orchestra Concert at Orchestra Hall in the Fall of 1978.
2. We have been six-concert subscribers for many years, generally fourth row center.
3. Each year we would attend a number of other events at the hall, including Sommerfest, special concerts, and the like. We know 1111 Nicollet Mall and vicinity….
4. I have paid attention to this Management manufactured loss of season since it began: here.
5. I have no formal or informal standing in this controversy, other than as a subscriber. On the other hand, I spent an entire career in labor-management matters, and I know how the process works.
Previous posts: Here (two posts), here and here.
Responses:
1. John G, June 21:
My first experiences with this orchestra were in autumn of 1964 when I moved to MN as a temporary faculty member at Macalester, pinch-hitting one academic year for someone on sabbatical. Back then Robert Shaw came up to prepare the chorus for Britten’s War Requiem, and Stan was already in charge. During 1964-83 I was a Minnesotan DFL-er (transplanted gratefully from having been for 12 years a Republican). Then came similar lockouts at Moorhead State, although named “retrenchments.” So I was off again, this time away from teaching into the publishing world at Presbyterian Publishing House in Atlanta (and later Louisville). That story is too long.
My main point is this: of course, undoubtedly I have had it with this mismanagement – so I do not expect to return to Orchestra Hall until and only if they grow up and treat the musicians with the respect they deserve for their accomplishments, and with the honor due to fellow human beings. This firm intent was formed independently of your blog, so this determination will stick along with yours.
2. Vicci J, June 21 (writer is a retired Twin Cities public school band director): Please, do NOT boycott performances at Orchestra Hall. MN Orchestra management is not “the bad guy.” This problem is a legacy of the Legislated cuts to K-12 education. Music education is always the first to be cut. K-12 music programs develop the audience base specifically for organizations such as the MN Orch.
Since the public schools have not maintained on-going music programs which develop the audience base to support the Orchestra…no management agency, no marketing firm, has the talent to repair the damage. When the food chain is eliminated, the system dies.
What the Orch needs is a campaign for citizens to call their political representatives to restore money to K-12 education. You would be ideal to initiate this objective..your heart and head are in the right place.
For supporting evidence…
You will find and understand the politics of education cuts by reading “The Manufactured Crisis” by Biddle and Berliner, 1995. Written by two college profs, it goes through the political framework that started the demise of public schools. To synthesize a little, around 1970 a very wealthy man willed his fortune to the Heritage and Coors Foundations for the singular purpose of downsizing public education. The Heritage and Coors foundations created a marketing campaign to discredit public schools. It worked. It also destroyed arts tourism in many large cities.
Consider one core reason: The guys and gals who returned home after WWII were given the GI bill to attend college. Millions that would have gone to blue collar jobs, now filled white collar jobs. These citizens are the largest group of “formally-educated-citizens” of the same or close age, that have ever existed in the history of the world. From this group, came the Baby-Boomers..an even larger group of educated citizens that questions government…all the time. Recall Vietnam protesting? The US Constitution and the Bill of Rights are the laws of our land, but to maintain them requires a great deal of citizen participation. The core or our Constitution can only be maintained if citizens are well-educated and maintain a vigilance to current events. To develop such a citizenry, appropriate funding to our public schools is mandatory, which in turn, maintains great orchestra’s such as in MN.
The Biddle and Berliner book is still available at Barnes and Noble and through Amazon.
PS: the US has 5 “top-tier” orchestras, Minnesota, New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago. “Top-tier” means top pay.
3. from Minnesota Orchestra volunteer who prefers to remain anonymous, who has information on excellent authority, June 26:
Thank you for your efforts.
I have forwarded your letter to a network of supporters. This network will take your words and thoughts farther than I could.
A friend is a locked out usher at Orchestra Hall. With this status the friend has received “advice” that there will be monitoring of publications, blogs, letters etc. So most of are rather careful with being identified with endorsements.
As for me, the Burt Hara departure is a barometer of the status of the Orchestra. Rather than negotiate to NOT accept a $30,000 reduction in salary, Burt received a $30,000 increase. A similar situation presented itself for Gina DiBello. This is bad news for the expectation of future quality performances resulting from a homogeneous vision and artistic spirit in the MOA environment.
PS: Los Angeles pays significantly more than MN. I found the base pay on line.
4. from Jane P, June 28, 2013:
To the Board of Directors of the MN Orchestra:
I have lived in Minnesota and been proud member of the arts community for over 30 years. In that time I have witnessed a change in the large non-profit arts groups toward taking the focus away from the local performers and putting it on new buildings as well as out-of-town celebrities. MN Orchestra has joined this dubious parade. This seems to follow a national trend of devaluing labor in many fields, but the arts are different from other businesses.
I understand that you wish to encourage new audiences who may need the attraction of celebrities or of luxurious buildings to come in your doors. However, you are currently greatly endangering the availability and quality of your musicians. High-quality artistry does not come easily, not does it come cheaply . As a performer myself, I know intimately what it takes to train and maintain an artist. It requires latent talent, a huge investment in time, treasure, and labor during training, as well as a huge investment of time to maintain those skills. Artists cannot do this without the promise of very good salaries. The training of a professional musician is equivalent to the education of a doctor in terms of investment. Would you offer your paltry salaries to doctors?
Without the promise of a good living, the artists will be forced to take other jobs, or may become amateur musicians instead. With a poor quality orchestra, the Twin Cities as an arts magnet for future growth will be gone. If you damage the quality of your orchestra, you will repel your audience, as audiences can judge quality. Your expensive new hall will become another Ordway, if not a white elephant. Have any of your board members extensive personal experience with the training of a musician like they do with managing businesses?
Please reconsider your recalcitrance and your responsibility to the Twin Cities arts supporters.
Thank you for your time.
5. From Will S. July 25, 2013:
Is it beyond the bounds of a reporter to seek enlightened opinion on how our community can put in place a long-term funding mechanism to ensure that what remains of SPCO remains here and to save the Minnesota Orchestra, George Mitchell’s involvement notwithstanding?
To my simple mind, the answer is: Governor-led and Legislature-led efforts to create permanent public-private partnerships.
If our elected public officials and we citizens-voters-taxpayers value these orchestras as much as this governor and the previous one and the legislatures of those eras do and did professional sports, then they will take a leadership now, however late it may be in the game, and at least consider such partnerships if you run this idea past them.
There must be others such as arts funding specialists to talk to.
It’s essential to keep us informed about short-term developments with each orchestra but I believe it’s the responsibility of the media to explore various possible long-term solutions and bring them to the attention of the taxpayers so they can decide if they want their tax dollars spent in that manner (which, of course, was not done with the Twins and Vikings stadiums and now the Saints’ stadium.)
The head of the Strib’s editorial board Lori Sturdevant, always touting our vaunted quality of life, is fond of calling publicly-funded sports stadiums “social amenities.”
I wonder what term she reserves for our orchestras.
Surely she must understand how much they contribute in so many ways to making Minnesota what it is today, with or without professional and big-time college sports.
(The Minnesota Orchestra in Lake Wobegon, continued)
… The last four miles were bumper to bumper stop and go road construction miles. The 69 minute concert ended at Milepost 171, one of the St. Cloud exits. Ahead of me was a late model Honda with another Minnesota icon on its license plate: a Loon. Years earlier, I remembered an outdoor concert by the Orchestra in St. Cloud. It was a pleasant summer day. I listened to the CD again, and again. It is marvelous.
The Minnesota Orchestra I listened to is being strangled, nearly one year into the Lock Out by Orchestra Management.
Eiji Oue was then in his last year as Conductor. He was an unlikely appointment at the time he came to Minnesota, but I liked him.
One of the most memorable concerts I ever attended at Orchestra Hall had him at the Podium. It was Saturday, September 29, 2001. I wrote my family the following day as follows:
“Last night, my wife Cathy and I were at our first Minnesota Symphony Orchestra concert of the season at Minneapolis Orchestra Hall. The magnificent hall was packed to the rafters, awaiting a program of Beethoven’s 6th, and Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”. This night, a huge American flag provided the backdrop. Maestro Eiji Oue, in his last year as conductor and music director, ascended the podium, and without announcement or fanfare, led the full orchestra in the “Star Spangled Banner”. It was the most rousing, and peace-filled, rendition I have ever heard. It was as if Peace owned that flag, last night….”
Now that Hall is empty, and the Orchestra that built it is mute.
What’s ahead, nobody knows.
Out in North Dakota, I drove through an almost dead tiny town, and much to my surprise came across a wall mural which catches my feelings at this moment. That lonely sign on the side of a deserted building, facing away from any highway, says it all. Unfortunately, it seems left to we in the audience to save this Orchestra, or let it die.
Together we can.
I opt for life.
(click to enlarge photo)
Pingree ND July 6, 2013

Pingree ND July 6, 2013


MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA BOARD OF DIRECTORS
AS OF JUNE 23, 2013
* – Membership on Executive Committee
IMG_1270
Officers

Jon Campbell*, Chair
Wells-Fargo Bank Ex VP, Dir of Govt and Comm Relations
Minneapolis
Richard K. Davis*, Immediate Past Chair
U.S. Bancorp Chair, President and CEO
Minneapolis
Michael Henson*, President and CEO
Minnesota Orchestral Association
Minneapolis
Nancy E. Lindahl*, Secretary
Deephaven MN
Patrick E. Bowe*, Treasurer
Cargill Corp V.P.
Wayzata MN
Life Directors
Nicky B. Carpenter*
Educational Consultant
Wayzata MN
Kathy Cunningham*
Mendota Heights, MN
Luella G. Goldberg*
Minneapolis MN
Douglas W. Leatherdale*
Chairman and CEO, Retired
The St. Paul Companies
Minneapolis MN
Ronald E. Lund*
Eden Prairie MN
Betty Myers
St. Paul, MN
Marilyn Carlson Nelson
Chairman, Carlson Holdings
Minneapolis MN
Dale R. Olseth
Chairman Emeritus, SurModics
Eden Prairie MN
Rosalynd Pflaum
Wayzata MN
Directors
Emily Backstrom
Finance Director, General Mills
Minneapolis, MN
Karen Baker*
Orono MN
Rochelle Blease
SVP, Strategy and Business Development
Wolters, Kluwer Financial Services
Minneapolis MN
David L. Boehnen
Dorsey & Whitney
Minneapolis MN
Margaret A. Bracken
Minneapolis MN
Jan M. Conlin
Partner and Chair of Business
Trial and Litigation Group
Robins, Kaplan, Miller and Ciresi
Minneapolis MN
Mark Copman
Vice President, Corporate Development, 3M
St Paul MN
Ken Cutler
Managing Partner,Dorsey and Whitney LLP
Minneapolis MN
Jack W Eugster*
Excelsior MN
John F. Farrell, Jr
Chairman and CEO, Haskell’s Inc
Minneapolis MN
D. Cameron Findlay
SVP, General Counsel and Secretary
Medtronic
Minneapolis MN
Ben Fowke*
Chairman, President and CEO
Xcel Energy
Mineapolis MN
Paul D. Grangaard
President and CEO
Allen Edmonds Shoe Corp
Port Washington, WI
Jane P. Gregerson*
Minneapolis MN
Susan Hagstrum
Minneapolis MN
Jayne C. Hilde*
Vice President, Satellite Shelters
Plymouth MN
Karen L Himle*
Director, HMN Financial
Minnetonka MN
William A Hodder
Edina MN
Shadra . Hogan
Minnetonka MN
Mary L. Holmes
Wayzata MN
Phillip Isaacson
Chairman, Nonin Medical
Plymouth MN
Nancy L Jamieson
Friends of the MN Orchestra Pres-Elect
Bloomington MN
Lloyd G. Kepple
Partner, Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly
Minneapolis MN
Michael Klingensmith
Publisher and CEO, Star Tribune
Minneapolis MN
James A Lawrence
Chariman Rothschile North America
New York, New York
Mary Ash Lazarus
CEO, Vestiges Inc
Minneapolis MN
Allen U. Lenzmeier*
Vice Chairman, Retired, Best Buy
Minneapolis MN
Warren E. Mack
Parner, Fredrikson & Byron PA
Minneapolis MN
Harvey Mackay
Chairman, Mackay Envelope Company
Minneapolis MN
James C. Melville*
Kaplan, Strangis and Kaplan
Minneapolis MN
Eric Mercer, Partner
PriceWaterhouseCoopers
Minneapolis MN
Hugh Miller
President and CEO, RTP Co
Winona MN
Timothy O’Brien
General Counsel,
Pine River Capital Managemnt LP
Minnetonka MN
Liz O’Neal
Chair, Crescendo Project Board
Minneapolis MN
Anita M. Pampusch
President, Retired,
Bush Foundation
St. Paul MN
Eric H. Paulson
Excelsion MN
Chris Policinski*
President and CEO
Land O’Lakes
St. Paul MN
Teri E. Popp*
Attorney
Paula J Prahl
Long Lake MN
Gregory J. Pulles*
Dorsey & Whitney
Minneapolis MN
Judy Ranheim
President, Young People’s Symphony Concert Association
Minneapolis MN
Michael M. Roos
Partner, KPMG
Minneapolis MN
Jon W. Salveson
Vice Chairman, Investment Banking, Chairman, Healthcare Investment Banking Group,
Piper Jaffray and Co
Minneapolis
Jo Ellen Saylor*
Edina MN
Sally Smith
CEO and President, Buffalo Wild Wings
Minneapolis MN
Robert Spong
New Brighton MN
Gordon M Sprenger*
CEO, Retred, Alina Hospitals and Clinics
Chanhassen MN
Sara Sternberger*
WAMSO President
Eagan MN
Mary S. Sumners
Managing Director, RBC Wealth Management
Minneapolis MN
Georgia Thompson*
Minnetonka MN
Maxine Houghton Wallin
Edina MN
Tim Welsh
Director, McKinsey & Co
Minneapolis MN
Wendy Wenger Dankey
Executive Director,Wenger Foundation
Wayzata MN
John Whaley
Managing Administrative Partner
Norwest Equity Partners
Minneapolis MN
David S. Wichmann
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Office
UnitedHealth Group and
President, UnitedHealth Group
Operations and Technology
Minnetonka MN
John Wilgers*
Minneapolis Office Managing Partner
Ernst & Young
Minneapolis MN
Paul R. Zeller
SVP and Chief Financial Officer
Imation
Oakdale MN
Directors Emeriti
Margaret D Ankeny
Wayzata MN
Mari Carlson
Director of Development
Mt Olivet Lutheran Church
Minneapolis MN
Andrew Szaijkowki
President & CEO, Retired
Blue Cross & Blue Shield
St. Paul MN
Dolly J Fiterman
Minneapolis MN
Beverly Grossman
Minneapolis MN
Karen H. Hubbard
Lakeland MN
Hella Mears Hueg
St Paul MN
Joan A. Mondale
Minneapolis MN
Susan Platou
Wayzata MN
IMG_1268
IMG_1586
Honorary Directors
Chris Coleman, Mayor, St. Paul
Barbara Johnson, Chair, Minneapolis City Council
Eric Kaler, President, University of Minnesota
R. T. Rybak, Mayor, City of Minneapolis
Downtown Minneapolis from Orchestra Hall May 31, 2013

Downtown Minneapolis from Orchestra Hall May 31, 2013

Dick Bernard: An Open Letter to Minnesota Orchestra fans who purchased tickets for 2012-2013, or have ever attended even a single performance of the Minnesota Orchestra at Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis MN

UPDATES will be included as received at the end of this post. One particularly interesting link about Orchestra finances has already been added. Take a look within Molly’s comment.
There are other responses at the Twin Cities Daily Planet. You can read them here.
Here is a very interesting blog site directly related to the issue.
MinnPost has hi-lited this post as one of its every Friday BlogCabin, posted yesterday here. Thanks, MinnPost.
Minnesota Orchestra Board of Directors here. Contact address here.
Minnesota Orchestra Musicians website here.
(click to enlarge)

Locked Out Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra Concert Oct 18, 2012, with Maestro Skrowaczewski

Locked Out Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra Concert Oct 18, 2012, with Maestro Skrowaczewski


Dear Friend: I ask that you consider forwarding this letter to anyone you might know who can connect the letter with someone who’s heard the Minnesota Orchestra at any time at Orchestra Hall.
I write as an individual, expressing my own opinion.
Succinctly, the entire 2012-13 season for the Minnesota Orchestra is cancelled due to a Lock-Out of the Orchestra. If settlement is reached today, or yesterday, or tomorrow, my personal opinion will remain as stated below.
I have been active in the Lock-Out issue all year, and this letter is simply a continuation of that action. Within the externally imposed limits (lack of access to “truth”, “facts” which can be trusted, etc.) I am very well informed.
Prior posts begin here. There is an additional post here.
Personal Comment:
For many years I have attended concerts at Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis MN. (The Wikipedia entry about Orchestra Hall, as it appeared on June 5, 2013, is included in text form at the end of this post.)
For perhaps the last dozen years we’ve been six-concert Subscribers, almost always attending some additional events at Orchestra Hall during the year. Our usual location was about Row 4, directly behind the Maestro.
February 8, 2012, we were among those who received an e-mail from the Minnesota Orchestra for a “one-of-a-kind concert season”: MN Orch Feb 8 2012002 We attended the special concert at the Convention Center. We re-subscribed, as always.
“One-of-a-kind concert season”? 2012-13 has certainly been one of those. There have been zero concerts.
Like the Orchestra itself, we Subscribers have been Locked Out.
There are some basic facts I think are important to know:
1. Best as I can gather, an average of 1,600 of us attend each and every concert at Orchestra Hall.
2. The Board of Directors of the Minnesota Orchestra – the perpetrators of the Lock-Out – number about 80 people who, unless you are lucky enough to know one personally, are essentially anonymous, unelected by and unaccountable to either ourselves or the Orchestra.
3. The Orchestra, the target of the Lock Out, currently numbers fewer than 75 members, and this number has decreased markedly in the last 12 months, and will continue to decrease.
4. I have yet to meet an Orchestra goer who comes to Orchestra Hall to hear the Orchestra Board; I don’t recall ever actually seeing in person an Orchestra Board member, though I may unknowingly have run into one in the old lobby of the Hall. They are names without faces to me.
To those of you who feel helpless in this situation, I understand. I feel helpless too.
But if each one of us in some directly affirmative way get into action, there is no way that the Board can continue its current posture, which is to stonewall, and blame the Orchestra Union for the stalemate which the Board, itself, created.
If we don’t act, we are complicit in the destruction of this World-Class Orchestra.

Additional thoughts follow.
You can respond to this post. I get first look, which includes your e-mail address (which does not appear in public). I pre-approve and will approve all responses that are not spam. My contact information is found on the About page of this blog.
Do something!
We are a small but essential constituency. We need to be heard, loudly, in diverse and very strong ways.
I am reminded of the famous Rev. Martin Niemoller quote, which he repeated in slightly differing ways in hundreds of speeches after Hitler was defeated and he was released from prison after WWII: “First they came…”
Destruction of a World Class Orchestra is not the Holocaust, but the general dynamic is the same.
Our silence is NOT golden.
*
Some closing random thoughts:
1. Almost certainly, there was a “Point Zero” in this catastrophe – a place and time when the Power Actors who began the road to this tragedy held their very first conversation, thence beginning the process of bringing their Board(s) along.
Someday, the details may come out about who, what, when, where…, but these will likely never be revealed by the perpetrators themselves. Somebody(ies) coordinated the idea of locking out five major U.S. orchestras, one of which was the Minnesota Orchestra, at about the same time for the same general reason.
All but the Minnesota Orchestra are back to work with, as best I can tell, negotiated agreements.
2. Orchestra Management holds all of the traditional tools of Power here: Money, Media, Mailing List (we have received at least 17 e-mails from the Orchestra Management this year, plus additional letters.) They don’t hold either the Music or the Audience.
3. The Musicians have not had this advantage.
4. As a long time subscriber, and one whose career was labor relationships, it is difficult to envision anything approaching a full recovery from this disaster. Permanent damage has been done.
A. We in the seats – the customers – have been ignored and dismissed.
B. Whether the shrinking body which is the Orchestra itself can recover its morale and esprit is very doubtful.
C. There is no good reason for Maestro Osmo Vanska to remain here, or for successor world class conductors to come to this community after he leaves.
These three, Orchestra, Conductor and Audience, create the synergy which makes the difference.
5. The pot of money called an endowment, and new lobby – are, from all appearances, the priorities of this Board, and make no difference in the long run. Hypothetical guesses about when the Orchestra would run out of money are self-serving guesses. It is interesting to note the Wikipedia article about Orchestra Hall. Its premise was to be non-elitist, welcoming to all….
For us, personally, the lowest point occurred a few months ago when the November 30 Rachmaninoff concert was cancelled.
Cancelled Concert Nov. 30, 2012.  This was a special event including our 83 year old friend, and his friend.

Cancelled Concert Nov. 30, 2012. This was a special event including our 83 year old friend, and his friend.


This concert was not one of our subscriptions. We purchased four tickets for this one specifically to take our 82 year old neighbor and his friend to the concert. November 30 was to be a high point life experience for him.
Cancelled.
There is no way to recover from such a loss.
The Orchestra Board – all of them – should resign, giving an opportunity to recover.
Of course they won’t, and perhaps they can’t as there is no mechanism to start from scratch.
But they should leave, or at minimum publicly apologize, putting a face and a voice to their public apology.
They are a disgrace.
2012-13 will be the true “legacy” of the current Minnesota Orchestra Board and Management.
What a disgusting legacy it is.
Personally, for me, the Union of the Minnesota Orchestra will be the one who has to invite me to resume my subscription to this Orchestra.
October 18, 2012

October 18, 2012


Orchestra Hall (Minneapolis)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Entry as it appears June 5, 2013
Jump to: navigation, search
Lobby and box office seen from 11th Street
Seen from Peavey Plaza
Fountain, Peavey Plaza
Orchestra Hall, located at Nicollet Mall and 12th Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, is home to the Minnesota Orchestra. The Hall was built in 1974 (along with the adjacent Peavey Plaza) and opened for the 1974 concert season. It is a major landmark of the southern portion of the Nicollet Mall and home to many events throughout the year in addition to the Orchestra’s home base.
The auditorium seats 2,450, seating 1,500 on the main floor. The remaining 950 seats are placed in three tiers above the main floor, and along the side of the hall. The auditorium is actually a second building separated (for acoustical reasons) by a one inch gap from the “shell” which contains the lobby and offices. The stage is unusual due to the large cube motif in the rear wall, which continues along the ceiling of the hall all the way to the back of the hall. The cubes were added for acoustic reasons (with great success), but turned out to be visually striking as well.[1] The great acoustical design has been attempted to be duplicated in many other concert halls.
Built in 1975, Peavey Plaza was designed by landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg who also designed the Loring Greenway. The plaza which holds an amphitheater and water fountain is considered one of the endangered historic properties in Minnesota.[2][3]
Originally noted for its Modernist design, chosen to represent an orchestra for everyone, not what was then perceived to be the formal “elitist” designs of the past.[1] The exterior of the building is recognizable by its large, blue ventilation ducts. Their unusual size was chosen to reduce air velocity and hence noise. The lobby area’s original “power plant” design was meant to remove tones of class and privilege from the symphony-going experience; it was upgraded in the late 1997 and includes several bars.[1] Expansive windows overlook the street.
In April 2007, it was announced that the hall would be undergoing a multi-million dollar renovation.[4] This renovation had a heavy emphasis on the lobby and patron areas.
On April 9, 2010, plans were revealed for a $40 million renovation and expansion. The lobby and public areas will be doubled in size and the current utilitarian exterior will be replaced with stone and glass. A grand new entrance will also be added. KPMB of Toronto are the architects and MBJ of Minneapolis are the structural engineers. Construction began in June 2012 and will reopen in late summer of 2013.
See also
List of concert halls
References
^ a b c Millett, Larry (2007). AIA Guide to the Twin Cities: The Essential Source on the Architecture of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Minnesota Historical Society Press. p. 30. ISBN 0-87351-540-4.
^ Metzger, Michael (May 1, 2008). “Peavey Plaza makes list of endangered historic sites”. MinnPost.com (MinnPost). Retrieved 2008-05-01.
^ Bruch, Michelle (May 1, 2008). “Peavey Plaza on list of endangered historic places”. Downtown Journal (Minnesota Premier Publications). Retrieved 2008-05-01.
^ “What Sounds Great at Orchestra Hall? A $90m Facelift” St. Paul Pioneer Press, 30 April 2007.
External links
Orchestra Hall from the Minnesota Orchestra’s website

UPDATES as received:
from Molly R, June 5: Did you see this post yesterday? I thought it was excellent. Detailed but quite clear. [about the Finances of Minnesota Orchestra, from MinnPost Community Voices]
From Carol T, June 5: Did the subscribers have their money refunded? I have not been to a MN Orchestra concert in years (sorry to say), but this is a disaster nevertheless. And what is the Twin Cities’ motto these days anyway – love our stadiums, hate our musicians?? Response from Dick: Money was refunded if requested. If not, could be used for tickets next season. We opted for refund. We didn’t pay to have our season cancelled.
From John B, June 6:
The orchestra mess reminds me that historically, in Europe, musicians held the same social level as servants to the rich. If the MN Orch was proficiently artistic at a level of say, 95 and even 25% of the members left, management could probably hire replacements at lower salaries and maintain a level of artistic proficiency at 94. This is my opinion, but the available and qualified pool of highly capable professional musicians is very deep and wide. Supply and demand rules again.
To state the obvious: the MN Orch Board has the power, the musicians union does not. It is Walkerism on the cultural level. Truth be told, I bet the 80 Orch board members couldn’t discern the artistic differential between a proficiency level of 95 and 90. Also, truth be told, I think most rich arts supporters don’t know squat about the fine points in the arts. They have the money to donate big time and love the power and want to look good and get the payoff of being on the Board.
I am reading a good book titled The Org, about the why and ways of organizations in our society. Some great insight by Fisman and Sullivan.
From Anonymous, June 6, in Twin Cities Daily Planet: I admit I have been following this issue from a fairly distant perspective. I have attended a small but few concerts at the Hall. Yet I’m still unclear of the reasons the 80 member board to request members of the orchestra to take a 20 to 35% pay cut other than they do not have enough money to support the orchestra at its current level? Could be as simple as they actually do not have the money? Is it because they are inherently evil and are bent on destroying an orchestra? Or are they not inventive enough to attract additional revenue to support existing budgets? Someone help me out … if there is enough money why is the board holding out?
Dick, responding to anonymous: Molly (Minnpost link comment above) provided a link to an excellent analysis of the money situation with the MO. As one who spent most of my working career in and around collective bargaining, I know that the “truth” was often false, in the way that it was presented. The numbers were accurate, but one was foolish to take them at face value. My understanding, and this is only my understanding, is that from early on the Union only wanted to see the documentation of the supposed money problems. For whatever reason, the Orchestra Management declined – and may still be declining – to reveal the kind of things suggested in the MinnPost article. In my own pretty extensive history with bargaining, including working with many staff people who had the same job as I did, all of us working over the years with thousands of contracts, money was almost always the stated public issue; most often, though, the primary issue was not money at all. People could understand $’s (whether the numbers were true or not made no difference); they had more difficulty with conceptual things, often things like being treated with basic respect. From what I know, and I don’t know the entire story here, because no one will ever tell me that, “money” is not and has never been the issue in the conflict between the Orchestra Management and its Union. Money has been the excuse, but not the reason. It also interests me that Minneapolis Star Tribune has twice passed on columns from me about this issue. This is not a matter of writing ability: I’ve been published frequently in the STrib. They aren’t interested in my dissonant voice on this issue. (The President and CEO of the STrib is also on the Board of the Minnesota Orchestra.)
Comments also found at my June 1 Post:
From Alan S, June 2, 2013: I just cannot believe how disrespectful this board is towards their musicians and their patrons. I cannot believe that they have any understanding about what these musicians go through to get to the level so that they can perform in the blind auditions and get acceptance to be hired at that level.
What kind of management would spend 50 million dollars to improve their plant, Orchestra Hall, which I believe is the most pathetic building that houses a major orchestra in any city in the country for a city of our size. Over 10 % of the seats cannot see the entire stage. On the third tier, close to the stage, you have at the most a 20 to 25% view of the stage, and the sound there is pathetic.
The building should have been built like the Ordway, not as deep and twice as wide so that every seat in the auditorium would have a straight on view of the magnificent orchestra that we used to enjoy. The plaza could have been designed to be in the rear of the building. After this building was built, and it was discovered that all of the seating did not have a complete view of the stage, the words architectural blunder appeared in the paper just once, and then never again.
4th row is great seats. We used to have seats in the center section on the left aisle in that row for many years. I myself never went to hear music, but to watch music being made. That location allowed me, if there was a pianist, to see his or her hands on the keyboard.
My own daughter performed as a sub (violist) with that orchestra when Leonard Slatkin was the conductor. One of the letters stated that only 52% of the seats are filled for concerts, Are they blaming their marketing shortcomings on the orchestra members? It appears that to me.
Cancelled Concert Nov. 30, 2012.  This was a special event including our 83 year old friend, and his friend.

Cancelled Concert Nov. 30, 2012. This was a special event including our 83 year old friend, and his friend.


from John G, June 4, 2013:
Beginning last September when I got first word of this lockout I have been
“on this case.” Likely you have the MOMO website, and there you can see
among “replies” my letters there. From the outset of this mismanagement’s
lockout it has been clear that they own no loyalty to our musicians and to
Osmo Vanska. For me this string of lockout cancellations has been one of
the major disappointments of a life that has been, since my mother’s
teaching of music, altogether fascinated by the world of classical music.
Anger about this is mine as well. I am also fully embarrassed by the
inaction of the powers that be, including our governor whose former wife has
been such a loyal supporter of the MO.
From the start the faceless Board has aimed to destroy the musicians’ union.
Years ago I served on the Board of the Inter-Faculty organization, a
thoroughly weak representative of faculty on the then-seven campuses of the
Minnesota State University System, and I have seen mismanagement in church
settings as well. Dick, the barbarians are storming our gates. Perhaps not
even the group of attorneys that I have repeatedly invoked, could turn
around this situation.
In any case, there is no publicly visible effort to
do that. Not only are we losing our Minnesota Orchestra as we have known it
under Osmo Vanska superb world-class leadership as Music Director. We are
also witnessing another terrible blow against unions and workers’ necessary
right to organize for their own right to exist.
Many thanks for your outrage and its effective expression. John
From Jane P, June 10, 2013: I couldn’t agree more. However, there is so little we can do. Not really anyway to contact them, is there? They are in an ivory tower – it is the newly remodeled hall that is useless.
To me this is a giant example of two very dangerous attitudes I see constantly in art and academic institutions: 1 . buildings are more important than programs 2. the labor and skills of most people have little value and can be easily reproduced by eager hungry new hires.
This is the path to the stone age!
Dick’s reply to Jane: I don’t agree that there is little we can do. If the audience, the subscribers, were to say we won’t be back unless the Orchestra itself asks us back, there’d be movement, fast.
Of course, a subscriber revolt is a very unlikely scenario, but it is possible. You are in the arts. This is an important issue for you, too!
Note additional comment(s) in Response section, below, and at Twin Cities Daily Planet posting (link at beginning of this post).

#727 – Dick Bernard: The Disastrous 2012-13 Minnesota Orchestra Season. A subscribers view.

Note comments as received which are included at the end of this post, and as Responses.
Prior Post: here
Musicians website here.
Tonight, June 1, was supposed to be our last concert for the 2012-13 season of the Minnesota Orchestra (MO).
Yesterday, May 31, I went down to view the under-construction area at Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis. Here are three photos:
(click to enlarge photos)

The vision of the building.  I was most struck by the police sign on the fence surrounding the illustration.

The vision of the building. I was most struck by the police sign on the fence surrounding the illustration.


The north end of the hall, the under construction new lobby would be to the left.

The north end of the hall, the under construction new lobby would be to the left.


Orchestra Hall from 11th Street.  The sidewalk immediately in front of the hall has no holes for "sidewalk superintendents" and security is tight.

Orchestra Hall from 11th Street. The sidewalk immediately in front of the hall has no holes for “sidewalk superintendents” and security appears tight.


Of course, there is no concert tonight. The entire season was cancelled, bit by bit, over the last eight months. The Orchestra was locked out, as was, to little apparent notice, everyone of us who normally fill the auditorium seats.
There have been occasional appearances by the LoMoMo (Locked Out Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra). We were privileged to attend the first one October 18, 2012.
Earlier this week I submitted a perspective on the Lockout to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It was apparently declined. My proposed column is found following the photo of the tickets (below).
I don’t feel as moderate as my commentary suggests.
Seeing angry comments in print in Minneapolis’ major paper was unlikely as this lockout has been and remains a “mover and shaker” issue, and my criticism would be of the “movers and shakers” who make up the invisible Board of the Orchestra, and by extension the downtown Minneapolis and Hennepin County Power Structure. (One of those invisible MO Board members is the Publisher and CEO of the Star Tribune.)
These 80 or so MO Board members are the folks who decided to authorize and to continue the Lock Out. (A lockout is simply a management version of a Strike.)
This management strategy has failed, resulting in an entire season destroyed, and the future is very uncertain.
Revisiting my long career in collective bargaining, I cannot recall, ever, as incompetent a bunch as this Minnesota Orchestra Board when it comes to the most basic of customer relations.
This very large Board seems to have no sense whatsoever about, or no interest in, its real base, we people who pay to come to hear and appreciate outstanding music performance.
The MO Boards apparent devotion is to its immense endowment (investments), and new lobby. Both are useless without an orchestra to showcase world class music, and an audience to appreciate it.
In struggling for an analogy that might give context to non-MO readers of the proposed article (below), I finally compared the 2012-13 fiasco to a theoretical similar scenario in a small school district somewhere in the metropolitan area. How would the community accept a decision to close the schools for an entire year made by a faceless School Board unelected by the public and thus unaccountable to the community?
Not well, I reckon.
Would what happened in that single school district impact on the other communities?
Ubetcha. Communities, even large ones, do not live in isolation from one another.
Over the months it has occurred to me, a long-time subscriber, that I wouldn’t recognize any current Board member if I ran into them on the street or, for that matter, at Orchestra Hall. They may as well be anonymous.
It is unlikely that there will ever be admissions that any mistakes, even small ones, were made by the large MO Board. The “wagons are in a circle”. But it was the Orchestra management who created this lockout, and thought it could force capitulation by its musicians.
I congratulate the musicians.
There will be a settlement, sometime.
Whether there will be a recovery is another question.
We ordinary folks, one by one, need to find our voice and act in the many ways that we can to save this Orchestra. It is not enough to blame, or say we can do nothing. We need to act.
Tickets to the last scheduled concert for the 2012-13 season of Minnesota Orchestra. Like all the other concerts, this concert was cancelled due to the lockout.

Tickets to the last scheduled concert for the 2012-13 season of Minnesota Orchestra. Like all the other concerts, this concert was cancelled due to the lockout.


The submission to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 29, 2013:
June 1 is our last Minnesota Orchestra Concert of the 2012-13 season: Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” plus other pieces.
We’ll do as usual: come in from Woodbury, attend afternoon Mass at our Church, Basilica; have a light dinner at the Hilton Saturday evening….
That’s been our pattern this year, as it has been for many years: six concerts (plus occasional other miscellaneous programs at Orchestra Hall); seats in Row 4, directly behind maestro Osmo Vanska’s stand. Good seats.
Oh…I just woke up.
That June 1 concert I mention was cancelled a few weeks ago, and before that, the 5th program; and before that the 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st.
This year our tickets were to be at the Minneapolis Civic Center auditorium while they built a new lobby at Orchestra Hall.
But we and our colleague concert goers (some might say “customers”) were Locked Out an entire season by the management of the Minnesota Orchestra, and we’re supposed to believe the narrative that it is the Musicians Union who are at fault.
We know better.
My file labeled “MN Orch 2012-2013” keeps growing.
Minnesota Orchestra is more than just an Orchestra – it is a world-class Orchestra.
But most people in this metropolitan area probably don’t much care about what is happening down at 11th and Nicollet Avenue.
As I’ve witnessed the destruction of the season this year, I’ve tried to put this unique community of MnOrch in some understandable perspective, if only for myself.
What does this disaster mean to our metro area and to our state?
Imagine a school district with about 150 teachers, whose School Board simply shuts down the entire system for an entire year, then blames the teachers union for the shutdown. What about the students and their parents, who are the customers? [edit June 1, 2013: I think the actual Orchestra – the Union – was less than 100 when this lockout began, and has already shrunk considerably as members leave for other places.]
That’s a reasonable comparison.
Full disclosure: I spent 27 years full-time in and around collective bargaining in Minnesota. It was my career. My colleagues and I managed in many assorted ways negotiations and administration of literally thousands of Minnesota school district labor contracts.
I thought we saw it all, one time or another.
Never in my experience, or in “war stories” we shared, have I heard anything similar to this wreckage of my Orchestra by faceless people – the Orchestral Association Board – none who I’d recognize if I ran into them on the street, anywhere.
Months ago, I wrote each of them – over 80 – a real letter, with stamped envelope, sent to the only address I had: Orchestra Hall.
Not one sent so much as an acknowledgement.
Quite often in my own personal experience with collective bargaining there were bruised egos and even, on very infrequent occasions, a strike, though never anything even remotely approaching the length of this lockout.
Bargaining is not a simple conversation, where one side dictates the answer.
But always there was a settlement. Seldom were there strikes preceding; never were there lockouts.
At some point – maybe tomorrow – there will be a settlement to end the Minnesota Orchestra disaster of 2012-13.
Will we be back in our prime seats whenever the settlement happens?
If it’s up to me, I’ll be back only if the musicians through their union ask us to return.
We don’t go to hear the Management, or to sip wine in a fancy lobby; we go for the Orchestra.
There will be no Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” on Saturday night.
The movers and shakers of this state best get their act together and settle this conflict. The reputation of our community is damaged.
Downtown Minneapolis MN from Orchestra Hall May 31, 2013

Downtown Minneapolis MN from Orchestra Hall May 31, 2013


From Alan, June 2, 2013: I just cannot believe how disrespectful this board is towards their musicians and their patrons. I cannot believe that they have any understanding about what these musicians go through to get to the level so that they can perform in the blind auditions and get acceptance to be hired at that level.
What kind of management would spend 50 million dollars to improve their plant, Orchestra Hall, which I believe is the most pathetic building that houses a major orchestra in any city in the country for a city of our size. Over 10 % of the seats cannot see the entire stage. On the third tier, close to the stage, you have at the most a 20 to 25% view of the stage, and the sound there is pathetic.
The building should have been built like the Ordway, not as deep and twice as wide so that every seat in the auditorium would have a straight on view of the magnificent orchestra that we used to enjoy. The plaza could have been designed to be in the rear of the building. After this building was built, and it was discovered that all of the seating did not have a complete view of the stage, the words architectural blunder appeared in the paper just once, and then never again.
4th row is great seats. We used to have seats in the center section on the left aisle in that row for many years. I myself never went to hear music, but to watch music being made. That location allowed me, if there was a pianist, to see his or her hands on the keyboard.
My own daughter performed as a sub (violist) with that orchestra when Leonard Slatkin was the conductor. One of the letters stated that only 52% of the seats are filled for concerts, Are they blaming their marketing shortcomings on the orchestra members? It appears that to me.
Cancelled Concert Nov. 30, 2012.  This was a special event including our 83 year old friend, and his friend.

Cancelled Concert Nov. 30, 2012. This was a special event including our 83 year old friend, and his friend.


from John, June 4, 2013:
Beginning last September when I got first word of this lockout I have been
“on this case.” Likely you have the MOMO website, and there you can see
among “replies” my letters there. From the outset of this mismanagement’s
lockout it has been clear that they own no loyalty to our musicians and to
Osmo Vanska. For me this string of lockout cancellations has been one of
the major disappointments of a life that has been, since my mother’s
teaching of music, altogether fascinated by the world of classical music.
Anger about this is mine as well. I am also fully embarrassed by the
inaction of the powers that be, including our governor whose former wife has
been such a loyal supporter of the MO.
From the start the faceless Board has aimed to destroy the musicians’ union.
Years ago I served on the Board of the Inter-Faculty organization, a
thoroughly weak representative of faculty on the then-seven campuses of the
Minnesota State University System, and I have seen mismanagement in church
settings as well. Dick, the barbarians are storming our gates. Perhaps not
even the group of attorneys that I have repeatedly invoked, could turn
around this situation.
In any case, there is no publicly visible effort to
do that. Not only are we losing our Minnesota Orchestra as we have known it
under Osmo Vanska superb world-class leadership as Music Director. We are
also witnessing another terrible blow against unions and workers’ necessary
right to organize for their own right to exist.
Many thanks for your outrage and its effective expression, John

#661 – Dick Bernard: Pearl Harbor Day and the wreckage of the Minnesota Orchestra Lockout

UPDATE February 23, 2013: Still unsettled…. I sent this letter to the 28 members of the Minnesota Orchestra Association Executive Committee last week. here. Sometime today I’ll again watch the story of Pearl Harbor. [Here’s this years Pearl Harbor reflection]
I also have interest in current affairs, and the recent lockout of the Minnesota Orchestra is an important issue to me, as we are subscribers, locked out like the orchestra from, perhaps, this entire year of concerts. Thus the following post:
Today is the annual meeting of the Board of the Minnesota Orchestra (MO). I didn’t know that till a newspaper column in yesterdays Minneapolis Star Tribune. I had decided, some weeks ago, that December 7 would be an appropriate date to write about the very public catastrophe facing this world class orchestra whose home is downtown Minneapolis MN.
As I write, there are major issues between musicians and management at the Orchestra. The solution for the moment is to lock out the musicians and those of us who bought tickets to the concerts.
For those with little or no interest in or knowledge of the issue, some time ago the Orchestra Board made at least two major decisions: to embark on a major renovation of Orchestra Hall; and to lock-out the Musicians of the Orchestra in a contract dispute, thus almost guaranteeing that the season will ultimately be cancelled (half has already bit the dust.). We subscribers have thus been “locked out” as well.
The Japanese preemptive strike on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the lockout of Minnesota Orchestra musicians came quickly to mind for me when this conflict affected we ticket-holders. In both cases there was a ‘win’, albeit short-term, for Japan, and for the MO management, but in the long-term it is a rather pyrrhic victory.
(click on all photos to enlarge)

Orchestra Hall Minneapolis MN December 5, 2012


There have been numerous interesting commentaries not necessarily taking one side or another: In the New Yorker was this contribution; last Sunday in the STrib carried this column. There have been many more commentaries. This has become national news.
I happen to have a particular interest in this lockout, since for a lot of years we’ve been a subscriber for six concerts a year, and perhaps have attended two or three more each season. We sit in the fourth row, behind the maestro. Perhaps there are better seats in the house, but we’ve come to like being upfront, and over time you get to know the nature of your neighbors, and they, you. We seem to be fairly typical among our fellow concert-attendees.
All of we customers have become the victims of this conflict. The list of victims is expanding, daily.
I also spent an entire career in and around collective bargaining, so I know the trade, including the foolhardiness of inserting oneself in the middle of a dispute where the real ‘facts’ (issues) may not be visible. All I can say for certain is that at some point there will be a settlement, and the sooner the better that will be for both parties.
As in war, the more protracted and bitter the conflict, the greater the residual damage will be.
In such disputes there are always diverse points of view, strongly felt. In this one, there seems to be value in ranking several top priorities, which I present in alphabetical order below:
Concern for the customers (the people who actually attend the concerts, whether one or a thousand)
New Lobby construction
Power and Control: authority issues
Quality Musicians and others who work for MO
Savings Account (the endowment fund)
Rank these from one to five (most to least important) and you might have a personal idea of where you stand.
Of course, there can be more factors, but these give an idea. As for me, the November 26 Star Tribune printed a letter from myself on the issue, in which I said, in part: “… we buy tickets to hear the Minnesota Orchestra….”
As a result of this letter, I received a number of very interesting phone calls and e-mails, all positive, all expressing similar concerns.
November 24, I sent a U.S. mail stamped letter to all of the 81 listed members of the Minnesota Orchestra Board. It is here: MN Orchestra Nov 24 Ltr001 (There are actually 25 members on the Board, but the Orchestra website lists honorary, emeritus and other Directors as well. They are listed at the end of this post.)
I asked each for “individual acknowledgement of this letter.” So far, no acknowledgements of any kind have been received from any Board member. Perhaps it’s a little too early.
Meanwhile, the hurt goes on as the cement shoes worn by the respective sides seem to be hardening. Maybe there will be a breakthrough, maybe not.
I went by Orchestra Hall Wednesday to take some photos (above, and following at the Hilton across the street), and together the photos evoke for me a very sad situation for a great orchestra in our great community.
I ask good faith bargaining, all cards on the table, and an honorable settlement.
Since it appears that this is essentially a Business driven conflict, I offer a piece of advice to the people who will have to ultimately settle the matter from my good friend, former Governor and successful businessman, corporate owner and philanthropist Elmer L. Andersen, in his memoir “A Man’s Reach” (2000), edited by Lori Sturdevant. At pages 96-101 Mr. Andersen summarizes his four corporate priorities, as follows:
1. “Our highest priority…should be service to the customer.”
2. “The company should exist deliberately for the benefit of the people associated in it.”
3. “[Our] third priority was to make money.”
4. “Our philosophy did not leave out service to the larger community…The quality of life in a company’s hometown is important to that business’s welfare and future….”

Of course, Mr. Andersen was talking about internal priorities within his own company, but still, it is quite good advice, I’d say.

At the Hilton Hotel near Orchestra Hall December 5, 2012


The Dream...December 5, 2012


Directly related post: here.
The Minnesota Orchestra Musicians Union website is here.
The Minnesota Orchestra Board as of December 6, 2012:
* – denotes membership on Executive Committee
Officers
Jon R. Campbell*, Chair, Wells-Fargo Bank
Richard K. Davis*, Immediate Past Chair, U.S. Bancorp
Michael Henson*, President and CEO
Nancy E. Lindahl*, Secretary, Deephaven MN
Steven Kennedy*, Treasurer, Faegre Baker Daniels
Life Directors
Nicky B. Carpenter*, Wayzata MN
Kathy Cunningham*, Mendota Heights MN
Luella G. Goldberg*, Minneapolis
Douglas Leatherdale*, The St. Paul Companies
Ronald E. Lund*, Eden Prairie, MN
Betty Myers, St. Paul MN
Marilyn C. Nelson, Carlson, Minneapolis MN
Dale R. Olseth, SurModics, Eden Prairie MN
Rosalyn Pflaum, Wayzata MN
Directors Emeriti
Margaret D. Ankeny, Wayzata MN
Andrew Czajkowski, Blue Cross & Blue Shield, St. Paul
Dolly J. Fiterman, Minneapolis
Beverly Grossman, Minneapolis
Karen H. Hubbard, Lakeland, MN
Hella Meaars Hueg, St. Paul MN
Joan A. Mondale, Minneapolis MN
Susan Platou, Wayzata MN
Directors
Emily Backstrom, General Mills, Minneapolis
Karen Baker*, Orono MN
Michael D. Belzer, Crescendo Project Board, Minneapolis
David L. Boehnen, St. Paul MN
Patrick E. Bowe*, Cargill, Wayzata MN
Margaret A. Bracken, Minneapolis
Barbara E. Burwell, Wayzata MN
Mari Carlson, Mt. Oliver Lutheran Church, Minneapolis
Jan M. Conlin, Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, Minneapolis
Ken Cutler, Dorsey & Whitney, Edina
Jame Damian, Minneapolis
Jonathan F. Eisele*, Deloitte Service LP, Minneapolis
Jack W.. Eugster*, Excelsior MN
D. Cameron Findlay Medtronic, Minneapolis
Ben Fowke*, Xcel Energy, Minneapolis
Franck L. Gougeon, AGA Medical Corporation, Plymouth MN
Paul D. Grangaard, Allen Edmonds Shoe Corporation, Minneapolis
Jane P. Gregorson*, Minneapolis
Susan Hagstrum, Minneapolis
Jayne C. Hilde*, Satellite Shelters, Minneapolis
Karen L. Himle, HMN Financial, Minneapolis
Shadra J. Hogan, Minnetonka MN
Mary L. Holmes, Wayzata MN
Jay V. Ihlenfeld, St. Paul MN
Philip Isaacson, Nonin Medical, Plymouth MN
Nancy L. Jamieson, WAMSO, Bloomington
Lloyd G. Kepple, Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly, Minneapolis
Michal Klingensmith, Star Tribune Media, Minneapolis
Mary Ash Lazarus, Vestiges Inc, Minneapolis
Allen U. Lenzmeier, Best Buy, Minneapolis
Warren E. Mack, Fredrikson& Byron, Minneapolis MN
Harvey B. Mackay, Mackay Envelope Company, Minneapolis
James C. Melville*, Kaplan, Strangis and Kaplan, Minneapolis
Eric Mercer, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Minneapolis
Anne W. Miller, Edina MN
Hugh Miller, RTP, Winona MN
Anita M. Pampusch, Bush Foundation, St. Paul
Eric H. Paulson, Excelsior, MN
Teri E. Popp*, Wayzata MN
Chris Policinski, Land O’Lakes, St. Paul
Gregory J Pulles*, Minneapolis
Jady Ranheim, Young People’s Symphony Concert Assoc
Jon W. Salveson*, Piper Jaffray & Co, Minneapolis
Jo Ellen Saylor*, Edina
Sally Smith, Buffalo Wild Wings, Minneapolis
Gordon M. Sprenger*, Allina Hospitals and Clinics, Chanhassen
Sara Sternberger* WAMSO, Eagan MN
Mary S. Sumner, RBC Wealth Management, Minneapolis
Georgia Thompson, Minnetonka MN
Maxine Houghton Wallin, Edina
John Whaley, Norwest Equity Partners, Minneapolis
David S. Wichmann*, UnitedHealth Group, Minnetonka
John Wilgers, Ernst & Young, Minneapolis
Theresa Wise, Delta Air Lines, Eagan MN
Paul R. Zeller, Imation, Oakdale
Honorary Directors
Chris Coleman, Mayor, St. Paul MN
Barbara A. Johnson, President, Minneapolis City Council
Eric W. Kaler, President, University of Minnesota
R.T. Rybak, Mayor, Minneapolis MN.

From 11th and Marquette, December 5, 2012


Downtown Minneapolis from 11th and Marquette December 5, 2012

#493 – Dick Bernard: A compliment for the Post Office as the year ends.

This afternoon I stopped at the Woodbury Post Office to mail several packets of material.
I’m a familiar face there, and I mentioned to the clerk that I was going to do a blog post about the post office this evening.
“Oh oh”, she said, expecting the worst. This time of year people in the delivery business don’t expect kudos. “Bad” sells better than “good” on the media and the internet….
She had no reason to worry.
I want relate a story about the cousin of the little guy pictured below (click to enlarge):

Gingerbread Man


I purchased some Gingerbread men at the November 27 Minnesota Orchestra performance of Hansel and Gretel. The program, of Engelbert Humperdincks classic, was superb. (Check YouTube for many samples of Hansel and Gretel.)
The evening was in celebration of the Centennial of the Orchestra’s Young People’s Concerts, as explained in the evenings program: MN Orchestra YPSCA001. The Gingerbread men (persons?) – the dessert for the evening – were a fund raiser of/for the Young People’s Symphony Concert Association (YPSCA).
Of course we sampled the men, but there were some left over. For sure, one was saved for our friend, Annelee, who grew up in Germany. We’d see her at Christmas time and hand deliver hers.
Another I decided to send to a friend in a distant state who I knew had, years ago, been a docent for the Orchestra.
The question was, how to get the little man to a home perhaps a thousand miles away….
I decided to try the U.S. mail.
My packaging was de minimis.
I had some empty photograph boxes from the local Proex, and put Gingerbread Man in one of them, and ‘cushioned’ it with similar boxes top and bottom. I wrapped the resulting ‘box’ with plain brown paper, addressed it, and took it to the local post office. Christmas mailing season was upon us, and I stood in line. When it was my turn, I gave the clerk the box, paid the postage and left. I simply sent it ‘priority mail’. No insurance, no special handling.
I was so sure it wouldn’t arrive ‘safely’ that I took the above photo and sent it to my friend, just in case it arrived in pieces. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
A couple of days ago came a note from far away: “The cookie was whole – no cracks or crumbles.”
Success. Thanks to the people of the United States Post Office.
Sure, in an enterprise as immense and as complicated as the Postal Service, or any other delivery service for that matter, there are occasional problems.
But as it has been for its entire history, our Post Office is one of the very best services we can hope to have.
Happy New Year! And thanks to all of you who serve the rest of us, when sometimes we aren’t at our best.
Related post, here.
UPDATE December 31, 2011: In the post office line about 12:30. There was quite a lot of business at the time (it ebbs and flows, not always predictably). One worker was on duty, two stations open, they were probably at lunch. A guy went up to the counter, saying he’d been in line “an hour”. I decided to check traffic flow, which seemed normal. At the time, I was 12th in line. A second worker appeared. Perhaps twice as many in line would fill the post office – the longest lines I normally see. It took 20 minutes for me to get to the counter for service – that was less than two minutes per customer ahead of me. Of course it seemed like longer, if that was one’s mindset. Most of the problems ahead of me were we customers, ill-prepared or whatever. I don’t see how the post office could make any modifications that would eliminate complaints, fair or otherwise. People do need to have lunch. Cutbacks are taking place, and more to come (someone behind me said “it’s going to get worse”). Interesting how our little ‘society’ in the line sees the postal world; and what we can learn about ourselves. I wonder how the postal workers see us….
UPDATE January 1, 2012: From Joyce, Dec. 31: The USPS has come in for a lot of criticism this year from the right wing – too many on the right are looking to privatize this vital national service. Considering the volume of mail the USPS has to process every day, the postal workers do a wonderful job!
Also from Joyce, Jan. 1: Your addendum reminds me of how subjective the passage of time can be, depending on the circumstances and one’s mood. Specifically, I had a new family practice resident at a delivery [of a baby] with me, and I had to resuscitate the baby with a bag and mask. Afterward, the resident and I debriefed together because he was obviously shaken; he marveled that I had been “bagging” the baby for at least 20 minutes, and I had to tell him that I was timing it, and the whole episode lasted no more than 20 seconds. He found that really hard to believe, but I had to point out that the second apgar score, which is done at 5 minutes, was 9 out of 10.

#313 – Dick Bernard: Old Music and Family History

Last night we attended the Minnesota Orchestra, where we’ve had season tickets for many years.
I’m a fan of classical music, but not a particularly well-informed one. Before we left home, Cathy asked “what are we seeing tonight?“, and I said “I don’t know.” The ticket wasn’t helpful: “Symphony and Song” is all it said.
The program turned out to be a delightful potpourri of all-Mozart, including the always outstanding Minnesota Chorale.
I never tire of Mozart-anything. One of the pieces played, Veni Sancte Spiritus, was composed by Mozart when he was twelve years old! (That was about the age when I first became a terminally resistant pianist. It took a while for me to get around to truly appreciating music. I got a D in Music Appreciation in college….)
But, January 16 was a delightful evening, as evenings at “long-hair” music events almost always are for me.
This particular night, for some reason, I fixed on Wolfgang Amade Mozart’s biography: born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg; died December 5, 1791, Vienna. His was a short, intense and extraordinarily productive life. Apparently the music never went out in his head.
1756, his birth year, had a particular attraction this night.
It was about 1757, when Mozart was a year old, that my last French-Canadian ancestor, Francois Collet, came across the big pond from Bretagne (Brittany) to Quebec. (The first known ancestor in North America was Jean Nicolet in 1618.)
Two years after Francois Collet arrived, the English defeated the French at the Plains of Abraham and Quebec became part of the British empire.
Sixteen years later came the American Revolution; and fourteen years after that the French Revolution of 1789 (Les Miserables, and all that).
In 1791, at the ripe old age of 35, Mozart died. In 1805, Francois Collet died in Quebec at the age of about 64, and life went on for families left behind: one with a famous descendant; the second whose story lives on in his surname (now spelled Collette) and many descendants, one of which is me, 7th generation downline.
As one of our families historians, I know that the history of all families, most especially ‘ordinary’ ones, are full of blank spaces, many of those spaces never to be filled. Indeed some of those blank spaces are intentional…”know all, tell some”…we all have our share of secrets….
All we know is that we descended from an almost infinitely long line of predecessors who left us with certain pieces of their abilities or disabilities. We are a sum of many parts.
During intermission I continued to read the program and came across an Essay on Mozart’s Ave verum corpus, by one Dan Chouinard. This piece was part of the program. (You can read the Essay here: Dan Chouinard Essay001)
Chouinard is most definitely a French surname, and in this case Dan Chouinard rang a bell: Dec. 7, 2010, my sister wrote about meeting Dan at an event in the town where she lives, and talk got around to our shared French-Canadian histories. Were we related, she wondered. “Dan Chouinard (Prairie Home Companion, pianist extraordinaire) and Prudence Johnson performed here in Park Rapids on Friday, hosted by the Kitchigami Regional Library with Legacy Amendment funding. Dan introduced himself as French-Canadian ancestry, whose early family immigrated to NE Minneapolis before Minnesota was a state. Of course, I told that I, too, was French Canadian, and told him about your family history project. He wondered if it was archived at the Minnesota Historical Society, and I’m glad to see that I was correct when I told him I was sure it was!
I briefly cruised through the genealogy part of the document we have and couldn’t see any Chouinards. Apparently some people in his family have also done a great deal of work on their genealogy, too.

I don’t know how or if our families intersect in a genealogy sense, but I do know family pioneers were in the present day Twin Cities area “before Minnesota was a state” [1858]. I haven’t heard much about music as a special talent in my French-Canadian ancestry; my interest seems to come from my mother’s German side. But, who knows?
I’m going to see about meeting this Dan Chouinard….