Symphony battle distressing

From halfway across the globe, here in Berlin, I am keeping up on the situation with the Spokane Symphony Orchestra players’ ongoing contract battle with the management, and with each passing day I become more and more distressed. Large pay cuts to the core players with increased pay to the administration. There’s something very wrong with that picture.

It is also plainly wrong to pay those core players a ridiculously low income, whether that is $17,000 or $15,000 a year. I grew up in Spokane. I studied music there. I started making music, my passion and profession, there. I know many of the musicians in the orchestra, and I know of their excellence and dedication. They are already paid far below what they should be paid, and yet another cut to that pay is an incredible insult. Insult piled on injury.

I remember the SSO’s 50th anniversary concert in 1996, when Don Caron’s composition “Paradigm Shifts” was premiered. Perhaps now, 16 years later, it’s time for another paradigm shift, one where the administration and the community finally realize the success of the organization will not and never will be found at the detriment of the symphony’s lifeblood: her musicians.

Sean Barker

Berlin, Germany