Arts District: Scene's Arts Blog

Everybody looked tired in the foyer at Severance Hall Tuesday as musicians and management of the Cleveland Orchestra held a joint press conference to announce an end to the musicians strike, and at least the key details of a new contract.

Executive director Gary Hanson looked like he’d been running on just a couple of hours’ sleep, which he had: negotiations had run all night, concluding at 6 a.m. As he and the musicians’ negotiating committee chair, oboist Jeffrey Rathbun, talked about the deal at the podium, musicians stood by, capturing the whole thing on digital video with their cell phones and Blackberries.

The deal involved pieces of the offers that musicians and management had made earlier in the dispute. Instead of the one-year wage freeze proposed by the musicians, or the 5 percent pay cut proposed by the management, they settled on a two-year wage freeze, followed by semi-annual pay increases of 3 percent and 2 percent the third year. Musicians will donate up to 10 “services” (either rehearsals or performances), which helps the orchestra save money. In addition, the musicians will increase their health insurance premium contributions beginning in July, 2011.

Rathbun indicated there were still details of the contract to be worked out, and still “work to do” in the long term, but the deal—approved by a ballot vote by the musicians just before the conference—allows the season to proceed. Rathbun expressed gratitude that the deal did not “further erode” the orchestra’s standing among top orchestras in terms of pay, and therefore ability to attract top players. In an apparent nod to the overall financial outlook, however, he referred to the negotiations as “a wake-up call.”

The orchestra had already postponed its concert in Indiana, though music director Franz Welser-Most was to keep an engagement conducting the Indiana University Philharmonic Tuesday, and senior staff will keep an arts management seminar commitment Thursday. The orchestra’s residency in Miami will go on starting Friday, as scheduled.

In my conversation with Cleveland Orchestra principal flutist Joshua Smith we talked about the influence of classical rhetoric on the work of baroque composers. You can hear that in his most recent CD, J.S. Bach Flute sonatas, which he recorded with harpsichordist Jory Vinikour.

We were talking about music and language—specifically about his upcoming recital of Telemann’s flute fantasies with Laura Perrotta reciting William Shakespeare—but I had to ask about another art form. The cover art for the Bach disc is a photo of Smith standing in front of some very familiar graffiti. It turns out to be an otherwise grey concrete wall on the west bank of the flats, visible from the Columbus Road lift bridge.

Why graffiti?

“I love that question,” Smith says. “I am so tired of the idea that baroque music has to be presented in those arch traditional ways—pictures of stained glass windows, or of a flute on an oriental rug. I wanted to look for something fresh.”

He came to the idea of graffiti as a visual representation because like baroque sonatas, it has a well defined form and its own vocabulary of quick gestures that live in the moment of their creation. Not only on the cover of the disc, but in a related promotional video called Bach in the Moment several Cleveland graff artists spend time in the company of Smith’s incredibly fine playing. The video’s creator, Graham Veysey, uses photos by Jay Szabo that emphasize the walls’ palimpsest of color and texture, both in the context of the urban river, and so far up close that color and texture is all they become.

Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzx9seCpxG0

Do you have a story to tell? Join local writers and storytellers at Mac's Backs tonight, January 5th at 7 p.m. to share original, true or invented tales, and get feedback in a small group setting. New presenters are always welcome, or you can grab a seat and just listen.

See you at Mac's Backs Paperbacks, 1820 Coventry Road, Cleveland Hts, OH 44118. Free.

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—Elana Averbach