Leadership by waving something other than a baton

There was one of those scary “model your leadership on the collaboration between conductor and orchestra” blog posts in the Baltimore Sun the other day:

Musicians took furloughs and pay cuts that came to a 12.5 percent reduction in compensation. Administrative folks took pay cuts of up to 15 percent. But none of this would have worked if music director Marin Alsop hadn’t also sacrificed. She had already donated $100,000 to start the BSO’s OrchKids educational program, Smith reports. Recently she kicked in another $50,000 as part of a program in which the community would contribute funds proportional with concessions made by the orchestra.

True, she can afford it. For the fiscal year that ended a year ago, BSO paid her more than $700,000 in salary, benefits and artist fees, records filed by the BSO with the IRS show. But donations of $150,000 still represent a substantial dent in her net compensation and substantial resources redirected to the orchestra and the organization.

…By sticking with Baltimore and an orchestra she helped build and by giving back substantial dough in tough times, she showed that it really is the art and not the money that matters in the last analysis. That kind of example from the top is a lesson corporate CEOs could profit from. And the whole scenario of shared sacrifice ought to make donors and patrons confident that their money is being spent wisely.

Of course it’s likely that musicians wouldn’t have taken the cuts they did without what’s known in our business as “equality of sacrifice” on the part of orchestra leadership, so it’s not as if her givebacks were completely out of the blue; they were, in fact, necessary to make the concessions “work,” as the post’s author points out. There’s certainly no question that Alsop has been walking the talk to an extent unusual in our business, which is very much to her credit.

But it’s rare to read a column about conductorial leadership that actually gets something right. Most such columns are scary precisely because most outsiders completely miss just how feudal the relationship between conductor and orchestra is at its core.


About the author

Robert Levine
Robert Levine

Robert Levine has been the Principal Violist of the Milwaukee Symphony since September 1987. Before coming to Milwaukee Mr. Levine had been a member of the Orford String Quartet, Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Toronto, with whom he toured extensively throughout Canada, the United States, and South America. Prior to joining the Orford Quartet, Mr. Levine had served as Principal Violist of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for six years. He has also performed with the San Francisco Symphony, the London Symphony of Canada, and the Oklahoma City Symphony, as well as serving as guest principal with the orchestras of Indianapolis and Hong Kong.

He has performed as soloist with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Oklahoma City Symphony, the London Symphony of Canada, the Midsummer Mozart Festival (San Francisco), and numerous community orchestras in Northern California and Minnesota. He has also been featured on American Public Radio's nationally broadcast show "St. Paul Sunday Morning" on several occasions.

Mr. Levine has been an active chamber musician, having performed at the Festival Rolandseck in Germany, the Grand Teton Music Festival, the Palm Beach Festival, the "Strings in the Mountains" Festival in Colorado, and numerous concerts in the Twin Cities and Milwaukee. He has also been active in the field of new music, having commissioned and premiered works for viola and orchestra from Minnesota composers Janika Vandervelde and Libby Larsen.

Mr. Levine was chairman of the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians from 1996 to 2002 and currently serves as President of the Milwaukee Musicians Association, Local 8 of the American Federation of Musicians, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the League of American Orchestras. He has written extensively about issues concerning orchestra musicians for publications of ICSOM, the AFM, the Symphony Orchestra Institute, and the League of American Orchestras.

Mr. Levine attended Stanford University and the Institute for Advanced Musical Studies in Switzerland. His primary teachers were Aaron Sten and Pamela Goldsmith. He also studied with Paul Doctor, Walter Trampler, Bruno Giuranna, and David Abel.

He lives with his wife Emily and his son Sam in Glendale.

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