Seattle’s Crosscut.com obtained a copy of an email sent out by the SSO executive director Thomas Phillion, which might be considered the first emergency response of the damage control effort. Here’s the meat of the email:
While there are some positive aspects to the story, much of it concerns old news about discord backstage, including incidents that we have worked so hard to put behind us over the past year-and-a-half. The referenced litigation has been ongoing for nearly two years, and just recently the court dismissed the principal charges. There are no new revelations contained in the story, and in fact, there are a number of inaccuracies.
But because the New York Times is a paper of national record, my great concern focuses on the potential broad implications such an article may have on our orchestra’s national reputation. This is something we all need to reflect on.
Perhaps in the eyes of the average concert goer the SSO has an excellent national reputation, but the insider’s view has long been quite different. It is an exceedingly unhappy orchestra, even in the context of what is, on average, a very unhappy profession – and has been for a long time. Nearly every account I’ve ever heard in regards to the SSO’s problems has placed the blame for the discord (which is of long standing) squarely at the feet of music director Gerard Schwarz. The fact that the entire enterprise is built upon the efforts of basically one man, and with all parties beholden to him through shrewd board appointments and relationships with primary donors, is most likely what has led to the current situation. I don’t think that any personality, no matter who beloved or reviled, can sustain this sort of hold over an organization for a quarter of a century without an eventual accounting.
I feel badly for the organization, because they are in a catch-22: if they continue on with Schwarz, the musicians will continue to complain (rightly or wrongly), the situation will fester and continue to deteriorate, and the orchestra will suffer, at the very least, artistically, if not financially. If they decide to move on to someone new, the whole financial funding base of the organization might decide to move on as well, leading to a systemic financial crisis. In the end, the entire model of the modern arts organization has long been turned on its head in Seattle – with one leader at the helm, and allegedly with little or no opposing viewpoints honored or listened to – instead of a joint artistic/managerial strategy that seeks to create a flexible and thriving workplace. I hope very much for a soft landing in Seattle, not a crash, at least for the sake of the hard-working and excellent musicians of the orchestra. We’ll see…