“It’s all hands on deck at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra,” writes Lewis Lazare in Friday’s (9/11) Chicago Business Journal. “One of the world’s great orchestral institutions is preparing to start a new season next Thursday even as negotiations on a new contract with orchestra members look to be going down to the wire. A spokeswoman for the Chicago Symphony today said the hope is that a new contract would be done before the first concert of the season is given next week. But late today, the spokeswoman indicated orchestra members and management, including Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association President Jeff Alexander, remain in marathon bargaining sessions to try and get a deal done by the time CSO Music Director Riccardo Muti raises his baton to launch the Orchestra’s 125th season on Thursday.… The spokeswoman cautioned there are no guarantees a deal will be done by then.… Alexander, who came on board as the Orchestra’s new leader last January, hopes to avoid the … scenario three years ago when orchestra members … went out on strike for two days shortly after the season began without a new contract in place. At the end of the two-day strike, a new three-year contract was quickly ironed out and ratified by orchestra members.”
Posted September 14, 2015
Chicago Symphony Orchestra photo by Todd Rosenberg
