Symphony players take pay cut

The renegotiated contract will save the orchestra $700,000 this season; base pay shrinks more than 19%.

By Steven Brown
sbrown@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Saturday, Sep. 05, 2009

For the second time in two years, the Charlotte Symphony’s musicians have taken a pay cut meant to help fight the orchestra’s financial crisis.

The players will give up more than 19 percent of this year’s pay in a renegotiated contract they ratified Thursday and the orchestra’s board approved Friday. They sacrifice five weeks of work this season and accept a cut in weekly pay.

The revised contract will save the orchestra about $700,000 this season, said Jonathan Martin, orchestra executive director.

“The musicians have again agreed to be a partner in restoring the financial integrity of the symphony,” Martin said Friday.

When the orchestra goes back to work next week after its summer hiatus, the players’ base pay will be $975 a week rather than $1,050. Through June, they’ll work 33 weeks rather than 38.

In agreeing to the cut, the players were being “very realistic,” said violinist Elizabeth Pistolesi, chair of the players’ negotiating committee. “It’s in everybody’s best interest to survive as an organization.”

Meanwhile, over in Satellite Radio land…

Remember how concerned everyone in the public radio industry was about the threat of satellite radio? Particularly those of us purveying “niche” formats (e.g., folk, jazz, classical) whose audiences would be siphoned off by larger better-funded competition?

Well. Today’s Digital Music News reports that the now-combined Sirius XM radio has just reported its second consecutive quarterly drop in subscribers - the first declines in satellite radio history. Leaving the entire viability of the business in some jeopardy. Here’s the headline:

What happens when disposable incomes shrink substantially? The early learning is that premium access models take a hit, while ‘essentials’ like internet and mobile access are maintained. In the case of Sirius XM Radio, that is a serious problem given the large number of lower-cost or free alternatives. A seriously-bruised automobile industry is also dragging the total, especially for such a dashboard-intensive format.

Back to BKR: To be sure, WDAV – and all public media stations – face competition from all sides. But as I’ve opined before I don’t think satellite radio will ever be a serious threat. In fact, the recent layoffs as a result of the Sirius-XM merger included many of personnel involved in those “niche” format programming. The business may muddle through, but I’m skeptical that it will ever be a dominant force in the radio business.

Read the entire article here.

WDAV STAFF APPOINTMENTS

Following is an e-mail to WDAV staff sent earlier today announcing our two latest hires! – bkr.

———–

Friends: I’m very pleased to announce two new additions to the WDAV staff.

If you’ve visited the www.wdav.org website recently, you’ve probably already noticed the audio and video production work of Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr, WDAV’s first-ever (and possibly the first for a classical-music station) Multi-Media Producer. Jeffrey (whose last name is pronounced “Frime ‘n’ Wire”) comes to WDAV after 13 years at National Public Radio, where he served as an producer and editor for such programs as Performance Today, Morning Edition, and the new NPRMusic.org website. Jeff is a film-scoring graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston and attended Haverford College as well as the University of Michigan’s famed School of Music, from which he holds a Bachelor of Music degree.

Quite simply, Jeffrey is one of the most talented and innovative audio producers I have ever known. He was the driving force behind NPR’s Milestones of the Millennium – a two-year series of weekly documentaries that created “a picture in sound” of the pivotal events, places, movements, artists and musical works of the past 1000 years. Jeffrey is married to novelist Garret Freymann-Weyr, (in her own words, “the author of five Young Adult novels, one picture book, and one mercifully out-of-print novel for grown-ups.”) Jeffrey and Garret will be relocating to Davidson from their home in Washington, DC.

I am equally delighted to announce that we can now remove the “Interim” title from WDAV’s new Director of Marketing and Communications Lisa V. Gray. Lisa is a Davidson-based internet marketing consultant who launched her own practice two years ago to help area entrepreneurs and nonprofits integrate online tools with traditional marketing efforts. She has been active in the Charlotte arts community for 16 years, serving in executive positions with such organizations as Charlotte Trolley, Inc. and the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center. She has acted as WDAV’s interim director of marketing since August 2008 and is responsible for planning and executing WDAV’s comprehensive marketing and public relations strategy through traditional- and new-media methods, including the complete “makeover” of WDAV’s popular – and now weekly – eNewsletter.

In the course of her interim work Lisa has impressed the entire WDAV staff with her creativity, impeccable writing skills, depth of marketing knowledge and positive outreach to the media and the larger arts community. And, it should be added, one of the sunniest dispositions on the planet and a remarkable sense of grace under the severest pressure her demanding boss can muster!

Given their backgrounds and their new job responsibilities, I feel that both Jeffrey and Lisa’s appointments will further strengthen WDAV’s march into the digital future, and our use of multi-media to engage new listeners. Please join me in welcoming both Lisa and Jeffrey to the Davidson community.

–
benjamin k roe | general manager
wdav89.9 | CLASSICAL PUBLIC RADIO
beroe@wdav.org | www.wdav.org
704.894.2989 o | 202.834.4116 c
box 8990 | 423 N. Main Street
Davidson, NC 28035-8990

a member supported service of Davidson College

You’re now approaching Paris, Texas

The Charlotte Symphony Orchestra is at a fork in the road. Where it turns is up to you.

By Lawrence Toppman
ltoppman@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Sunday, Jun. 21, 2009

My favorite cartoon shows a landscape that’s barren except for a bottle, a can, a tire, a pencil and a few pebbles. The caption reads “Life Without Mozart.”

I could substitute Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, Edith Piaf, the Beatles or Frank Sinatra, all of whom would accompany me to that mysterious desert island that always has electricity and a CD player.

The difference is, those artists were expected to support themselves financially. People who play Mozart are not.

A 60-piece symphony orchestra will always need corporate and taxpayer support. Not sometimes, always. Ticket prices would otherwise have to be jacked up so high virtually no one could afford them.

So the question this city should be asking itself, as the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra struggles to recover from its financial dilemma, is this: Do we need an orchestra at all?

On a literal level, no.

Cutbacks are front and center for arts groups

37% drop in ASC fund drive likely means reductions in jobs, performances – or worse

By Steven Brown
sbrown@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Monday, May. 18, 2009

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/local/story/730644.html

Charlotte Symphony’s last concerts of the season, energized by jazzy music, revved up the audience and surpassed the box office goal.

Yet the orchestra and Charlotte’s other cultural groups are caught in the same recession as everyone else.

Just as social services will suffer because of a plunge in the United Way’s fund drive, cultural organizations face cuts from the Arts & Science Council beginning July 1. The ASC’s 2009 campaign brought in 37 percent less than the year before: $7 million compared with $11.2 million.

So, Charlotte nonprofits are in the same situation, whether they help the homeless or play Beethoven.

“Never before has the sustainability of that work been challenged as it is with this economic crisis,” said Michael Marsicano, president of Foundation for the Carolinas. (View a list of facilities funded by the ASC.)

WDAV to air more local flair

From the May 16, 2009 edition of The Charlotte Observer
By Mark Washburn

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/413/story/726682.html

Stations looking to cut costs are turning increasingly toward syndicated shows.

But WDAV-FM (89.9), the classical music voice of Davidson College, is turning the other way.

Beginning July 1, WDAV will drop its overnight service “Music Through the Night,” which originates from Minnesota Public Radio, and produce its own nocturnal program.

WDAV’s Ted Weiner will host the weeknights and Lauren Rico will do weekends on “The Early Shift,” bringing WDAV to 140 hours of locally originated programming weekly, or 80 percent of its schedule. That will represent an increase of 60 percent over last year.

“We’re living in a world where we need to build a bigger brand,” says Benjamin Roe, who took over as the station’s general manager last year.

“A big part of what we do in classical radio is provide you with your comfort food. We work hard to have consistent, strong voices.”

Next week, WDAV will launch a 17-day music series from the Spoleto Festival in a new partnership with South Carolina’s public radio network ETV. Beginning Friday, WDAV’s midday host, Jennifer Foster, will broadcast daily from the College of Charleston with commentary from ETV’s Marcus Overton and NPR’s Miles Hoffman.

WDAV is also planning broadcasts this summer from two of the region’s other major music festivals: the Brevard Music Center and Greensboro-based Eastern Music Festival.

And this fall, WDAV is looking at adding channels for listeners with digital, or HD, radios. It is taking delivery this month of digital equipment that would add two digital channels at its Huntersville transmitter off N.C. 115.

Roe says programming for the additional channels hasn’t been settled, but he’s leaning against merely airing other public radio sources.

“I don’t see where picking up ‘JazzWorks’ or another syndicated service is going to give people much of a reason to pick up HD,” Roe says. He’s focusing more intently on how the additional channels can bolster the station’s presence on the Web, where WDAV’s broadcasts are simulcast.

Charlotte Symphony gets donation

From the May 10, 2009 edition of The Charlotte Observer
By Mark Price
Posted : May 11, 2009

The Leon Levine Foundation has committed to giving $25,000 to the financially strapped Charlotte Symphony.

Foundation board members learned of the symphony’s urgent cost-cutting in a story in Friday’s Observer, including a request that players renegotiate the contract governing their pay and benefits.

The money will help the symphony cover the bills, said Jonathan Martin, the organization’s president and executive director for the past year.

But it means much more than that, he said.

“It also has significant affirmational value as we make our case directly to the community right now about the value the Charlotte Symphony can add to the community,” Martin said.

The symphony is also hoping to cut administrative costs by $250,000 through staff layoffs, furloughs and other measures beginning this week, officials said.

Our music, our selves

An educator shows how music can map the inner workings of our soulBy Karl Paulnack
Special to the Observer
Posted: Sunday, May. 10, 2009

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/165/story/710453.html

EDITOR’S NOTE: Karl Paulnack, director of the music division at Boston Conservatory, first gave this speech to parents of students in 2004. It has made the rounds on e-mail locally among honchos in the arts community and it’s particularly timely: Proposed CMS budget cuts could endanger field trips to the symphony next year.

One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated.

I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician.

When I announced my decision to apply to music school my mother said, “You’re wasting your SAT scores!”

On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they loved music: they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function.

So let me talk about that, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment; in fact, it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk about music, and how it works.

Symphony must act to avoid swan song

From the May 8, 2009 edition of The Charlotte Observer
By Steven Brown
Posted:  Friday, May 8, 2009

Orchestra plans to cut costs, renegotiate the musicians’ contract and pursue donations.

Suffering a critical blow from the recession on top of several years of financial troubles, the Charlotte Symphony is turning to urgent cost-cutting and fundraising in hopes of staying alive.

The orchestra this week asked its players to renegotiate the contract governing their pay and benefits. It also hopes to cut administrative costs by about $250,000 through staff layoffs, furloughs and other measures beginning next week, executive director Jonathan Martin said.

42 Million Americans Listen to Radio Weekly on Digital Audio Platforms

The complete study, The Infinite Dial 2009: Radio’s Digital Platforms, is available at the following link: Infinite Dial 2009 Presentation

The following excerpt comes from the April 24, 2009 edition of the RESEARCH BRIEF as provided by THE CENTER FOR MEDIA RESEARCH:

The latest study by Arbitron and Edison Research shows continued growth in usage and ownership of various forms of digital audio platforms, including online radio, iPod/MP3 players, and podcasting. The weekly online radio audience increased significantly in the past year to 17% of the U.S. population age 12 and older; up from 13% in 2008. On a weekly basis, online radio reaches 20% of 25-to-54 year-olds; up from 15% in 2008.

Bill Rose, senior vice president of marketing, Arbitron Inc., says “The sharp growth in weekly usage of Online radio… provides compelling evidence that radio’s digital platforms may be reaching critical mass. We are… seeing encoded streams of AM/FM broadcasts with significant audience in local markets.”