An opinion-editorial piece in Thursday’s (8/30) Indianapolis Star states, “Even for many residents who’ve never attended an Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra performance, the prospect of this city without a full-time, first-rate classical music vehicle strikes a sad note. For fans of Mozart and Rachmaninoff and partakers of the immensely popular Yuletide Celebration and Symphony on the Prairie, reports of drastic proposed cutbacks are cause for alarm. The devotees well know that times are tenuous for these cultural institutions. Fewer than 20 communities sustain 52-week orchestras, and ours is the smallest. … Whether the ISO will have to shrink to survive is unclear. Management has so far not publicly discussed contract talks, but the chief negotiator for the musicians’ union says the deal being offered would reduce the roster under contract from 87 to 63, slash wages nearly in half and pare the schedule to 38 weeks. All told, says Rick Graef, it would ‘ruin the ISO.’ A union alternative, involving furloughs and other concessions, would maintain current strength, he asserts. … A stalemate, with the new concert season less than two weeks away, could be crippling. A new pact as austere as Graef describes would leave a city of world-class aspirations with one less world-class asset.”
Posted August 31, 2012
