Why am I writing about the NYC musicians union while in Sicily? A bombshell story came out on April 12 (my birthday) about a scandal at the NY Philharmonic involving rape, date rape drugs, and tenure. But the real scandal, in my mind, is how, after the Phil had fired the two accused men, Local 802, the NYC musicians union, fought for them to get their jobs back, including back pay.
But let’s face it: this union protects those who have broken through to the top levels of the NYC music scene. They’re the ones who guarantee that if you play with a band on Saturday Night Live or one of the late night talk shows, and your image is shown on screen for like 2 seconds, you get a huge sum, on top of what you’re making for playing there. At least, this is what my high school viola teacher told me! I’m not a journalist; i haven’t done any research. Everything I’m writing here is from my own experience, and I left NYC for Boston over 10 years ago. I would love to hear from my friends in New York to know what they think of the union now.
I joined Local 802 myself when I was 19. Sophomore year at Mannes, I got asked to play with Da Capo Opera, a little outfit on the Upper East Side. I was psyched!! The contractor told me I’d have to join the union to play, so I did. The fees were still less than what I’d make on the gig, so it seemed worth it. (Side note: Da Capo was my first time playing in a pit. The trombone player liked me and made eyes at me all through the opera. This was my first time experiencing the effect that “pit lighting” has, because while I thought he was cute under the stage, by the light of day, I saw he looked old enough to be my dad!)
As the year went on, I played a couple of times with Da Capo. One of the regular violinists who was a grad student at Mannes told me she wasn’t in the union, and Zoe, the contractor, had just told me that to get me to join. Oh well, I thought. It felt cool to be in it, even if it wasn’t leading (so far) to any gigs besides Da Capo.
Then, before winter break, there was a big announcement to the Mannes Orchestra. The Metropolitan Opera Guild held a yearly bunch of concerts featuring young, up-and-coming singers, for school-aged audiences. They were going to start an “Apprenticeship Orchestra Program” to train young orchestral musicians to play with the young singers. It would cycle between the three NYC conservatories— Juilliard, Manhattan, and Mannes— and Mannes was going to be first. It would be over March break, so you’d lose your vacation, but you’d be getting paid, and getting to work in the freaking Metropolitan Opera House!! Only 20 or 30 musicians were asked, and I was so excited to be one of them. Mannes was mostly grad students; I was a baby there, comparatively, so it really meant a lot to be included.
As March approached, though, things got weird. At NYU, where I had a regular gig playing for their chamber music class (the perks of playing viola!!), and at SUNY Purchase, where my boyfriend went, I saw these flyers hung up all over the place: “Mannes Students Being Used as Scabs!” The Met Opera Guild thing had been a union gig, and Local 802 wanted it back. The flyers had stuff about dental insurance on there, which seemed weird to me— how do you get dental insurance on a week-long gig?? But now I understand it must have had to do with the employer paying in to the musicians’ insurance. Anyway, these flyers were EVERYWHERE. Juilliard, MSM, Columbia.. all the schools. Then my teacher told me in a lesson that the union had called her and warned her that they knew I was her student and she should warn me that if I did this gig, I’d never work in New York again. Again: I was 19!!! This was so scary. But I also felt like… why?!? Why were they trying to stop this? Young singers, young audiences, why not young orchestra?? If I hadn’t played with Da Capo, I wouldn’t have had any opera pit experience. Not that it’s SO markedly different from regular orchestra playing, but you have to be super flexible (recitatives, wildly expressive singers) and, if you’re a violist, ready to play some REALLY boring parts, often pages upon pages of “footballs,” aka unending whole notes.
In the end, Mannes decided to pull us out. The union had gotten the list of the students, and was threatening all of our futures as musicians in New York. Mannes gave us each a check for $100 (we would have made over $1,000 each for the week). And the gig stayed a union gig, and as far as I know has been so ever since.
I was so angry. Here was a big institution with a program that had such a cool mission— to bring opera to young urban audiences— making an effort to create a training orchestra that was equally split among the 3 big NYC music schools, starting with the littlest, scrappiest one! Yet the union was so protective of its older musicians having this one, week-long gig (or maybe it was 2 weeks?? I’m forgetting now), that it engaged in an all-out threat war on STUDENTS to keep us out. It left such a bad taste in my mouth. I wrote an angry letter to the Local 802 office and said I would no longer be paying my dues and was quitting the union.
Then, that summer, I got a letter that changed my life. I was at an orchestra festival in Germany. My mom told me that a giant envelope came from Eastman, in Rochester. I asked her to open it and read it to me over the phone (the days of landlines and international phone cards!!). “Congratulations,” the letter read. “We’ve increased your scholarship! Here is the George Eastman Grant, and a $500 Bookstore Award, etc etc.”
I had chosen Mannes over Eastman, but the decision was so difficult that I’d told both schools after the deadline. I LOVED my viola teacher at Mannes, but wasn’t crazy about the scrappiness of it all. No campus, dorms in a welfare hotel; in 2 years, I’d lived in 4 different places, including with my boyfriend up near Purchase, and my parents’ house. So I could very easily entertain the idea of transferring. I emailed the head of the financial aid office, to ask what this letter was about. He wrote back that it was a mistake on his part— he’d left me on the rolls of current students for the last two years (I heard from my friend Laura Hollander who went there that she often saw my name on lists by the FA office and was super confused!). But, as he put it, “It would be unprofessional to rescind the offer,” so if I wanted to go, I was welcome. That was that. I transferred to Eastman that September.
A year or so later, I started getting called to play with the Erie Philharmonic, and orchestra that hired both Eastman and Cleveland Institute of Music students as it was situated halfway between them. I had to be a union member, any local, they said, so I joined the Rochester one. The office told me I had a black mark on my name thanks to Local 802. So I contacted the office in NYC, paid something like $100 in back dues, and thought the matter closed. Then, last year, the union rep from Rhode Island Philharmonic, where I often sub, pulled me aside. “You need to clear your name with the AFM! (American Federation of Musicians, the central office for all unions). They say you owe money to Local 802.” I was shocked. This was 20+ years after that whole brouhaha!! I called the AFM office and they said I was fine. I won’t get into the weeds about how it had happened, but it’s strange how this story continues to come back to haunt me.
When I was on another youth orchestra tour— this one with Verbier Orchestra— I kept a travel blog to keep my family up to date with my adventures so I wouldn’t have to worry about buying postcards everywhere. For one leg of the tour, we were conducted by Charles Dutoit (for the other leg: James Levine!) and I really didn’t like him. It was an all-Russian program, some of the same pieces I’d played with Rostropovich at the other festival. Rostropovich, even though he was so old and cranky, was authentic and real. He talked about us all having the same heartbeat, and that heartbeat being the metronome of the music. Dutoit had obvious hair dye- which to early 20something judgmental me was unforgivable— plus he just seemed so… fake! I wrote something like that on my blog. My aunt warned me: “You should be careful what you write about people in power in music. It could damage your career.” (As it turned out, Dutoit was assaulting women all through that time, according to allegations that led to his engagements being cancelled by the BSO and SF Symphony). I tell that story just to say how much I appreciate the posts on this NYPhil debacle, and other issues of discrimination in music, by Katherine Needleman. She’s the principal oboist of the Baltimore Symphony and teaches at Curtis. She has tenure, but she also has a lot to lose, putting herself out there. The fact that her latest post was shared, to date, 835 times, says a lot.
If you’d like to send a message to Local 802 that it shouldn’t continue to protect and promote abusers, at the expense of younger, less powerful musicians, you can sign this letter.
