In Tuesday’s (4/9) Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minnesota), Kathy Berdan writes, “Although it looked as if an agreement were just around the corner, the locked-out musicians of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra announced Monday, April 8, that they would not accept a deal that Mayor Chris Coleman brokered late last week. In a morning news release, the musicians said the issues the mayor thought he had settled with orchestra management remain unresolved. ‘Management did not fully explain many of the important details of the proposal to the mayor, and in some cases, they omitted significant specifics all together,’ Carole Mason Smith, chair of the musicians’ negotiating committee, said in the statement. … Coleman responded Monday: ‘I have reviewed the (SPCO’s) proposal and your feedback on that proposal, and it appears to me that all these issues have been resolved. Any remaining differences are either minor or negligible.’ … In a letter to the mayor on Monday morning, SPCO president Dobson West said management was ‘discouraged by the tone and content’ of the musicians’ response. Management had previously set a 5 p.m. Monday deadline for cancellation of the rest of the season. If the musicians had agreed to vote on the deal brokered by the mayor with a recommendation that it be ratified, concerts would have been canceled only through May 5. … The SPCO board will meet in executive session at 4 p.m. Tuesday to discuss the future of the SPCO, West said.”
Posted April 9, 2013
