Death and Transfiguration

by Gerald Elias

  One of the Killas jumped on this statement. How can we be advisory, she asked, if we don’t even have a chance to hear the candidate? Herza has undercut our role to advise, she pursued, which is a violation of our contract. That’s the heart of the matter.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” shouted a Mega. “You only got tenure last month and now you’re lecturing us about the contract?”

  Parsley told him he was out of order, but the Megas were outraged. O’Brien’s termination was fully justified under the terms of the contract, they said. Li Jian, one of the Chinese violinists who had complained about the heat at Tanglewood, made the point that everyone in the orchestra—everyone—had at one time been hired by Herza, so we all owe something back to him. His political connections had enabled all the Asian musicians to get green cards to work in the United States faster than anywhere else, so that was another debt. Sherry O’Brien, like any responsible musician, should take her lumps and move on. Who hasn’t taken lumps from Herza over the years? Yes, he’s tough. But look what we’ve got. The best orchestra in the world, and the highest paying.

  “And that’s why the public thinks Herza’s such hot shit,” interrupted a Killa. “We’re the ones who make him look good.”

  “Impossible to do that!” chimed another, to the glee of the Killas but causing an uproar among the Megas.

  Junior Parsley used his capacious lungs to shout down the growing melee, ruled the two Killas out of order, and threatened to bodily evict anyone else who interrupted. Inwardly, he was relieved by the tumult; Li Jian’s comments could have split the orchestra along ethnic and age lines. He didn’t need that.

  What he did need, desperately, was sixty-seven votes, a two-thirds majority of eligible musicians, when it came time to vote on the contract package. He had done the math. There were a hundred and four members, but at present there were three vacancies occupied by subs, including O’Brien. The two-thirds requirement was a double-edged sword. Yes, it meant that management had to give them something good enough to do more than squeak through. On the other hand, if a vote on a contract failed while receiving more than a simple majority, management would have a heyday with the media, yowling, “How could the musicians have refused such a wonderful contract that a majority of them wanted? What a disservice to the public! What a shame!” He’d have as much bargaining strength as a steer in a cattle car.

  He gave the floor back to the Megas.

  What O’Brien’s done is unconscionable, rocking the boat with her grievance, and now she’s split the orchestra down the middle. What if the orchestra were to make some sort of stupid protest on her behalf? We’d have hell to pay from Herza. All of us. And now, with the contract negotiations at a critical moment, how will it affect that outcome? How will it affect the endowment drive? Tens of millions of dollars were at stake. More! We can end up losing everything. And for what? For someone who’s no longer even a member of the orchestra?

  The Killas said no. No, you can’t nail this on O’Brien. She has the right to file a grievance. She has the right to audition free of harassment. These are things guaranteed not only in our contract but also by law. It was Herza’s retribution for the grievance threat that caused this situation. Nothing else. One of the militant Killas then offered a motion, proposing a vote of no confidence in Vaclav Herza. This was shouted down even before the motion was completed. No one, even the Killas, had the nerve to second it.

  Another motion was proposed, as a simple statement of fact: “The musicians protest the treatment of Scheherazade O’Brien by the music director at the concertmaster audition.” After all, wasn’t this precisely what was being discussed? This motion was seconded, then argued for a half hour—with every word of it analyzed and fought over—before debate was closed. One of the Killas requested a secret ballot, but Parsley reluctantly had to deny the request as their bylaws stated that only votes on the collective-bargaining agreement or on requests by management for waivers or amendments to the CBA are taken by secret ballot.

  The vote on the motion failed, predictably, because some of those who would have voted for it on a secret ballot were terrified that Herza could now find out. The Megas moved to adjourn the meeting, a nondebatable motion, but surprisingly that too failed. Parsley, at loose ends what to do next, asked if anyone had anything further to say.

  Lawrence Nowitsky, one of the few musicians in neither camp, to whom both Megas and Killas could speak freely, sought common ground and proferred the following motion: “The music director and the musicians shall make their best efforts to promote evenhanded treatment of all candidates at all auditions.” He knew it was meaningless, ineffective, and unenforceable, but he hoped that it would at least bring the musicians a little closer together and perhaps provide his former stand partner, O’Brien, a modicum of solace that her experience at the audition had not totally been in vain.

  The other musicians also understood that the motion was meaningless, ineffective, and unenforceable, but they were exhausted and didn’t want to leave having accomplished nothing, so they quietly voted and passed the motion almost unanimously, with only five musicians—three Megas and two Killas—abstaining.

  Parsley asked if there was any further business. Relieved there was no response, he asked for a motion to adjourn, which was made, seconded, and approved with a unanimous grunt. The meeting disbanded, and after everyone departed, Lawrence Nowitsky quietly went to the maestro’s office.

  NINETEEN

  Later that afternoon, at the central office of the Stuyvesant Bank, the meeting of the executive committee of the board of trustees of the Harmonium Symphonic Society was called to order by its chairman, J. Comstock Brundage, whose day job as president of the bank made him very well connected indeed. Besides Brundage and those board members who were heads of symphony subcommittees on marketing, development, finance, the capital campaign, and the new concert hall project, the attendees included Music Director Vaclav Herza; CEO Adrianne Vickers; personnel manager Tyson Parsley; Loren Gardiner, a marketing consultant from DynamiCorp; and Lars Symington of Symington, Symington, and Warburg, SSW, as its competitors called it, the architectural firm that assisted Herza in designing Harmonium Hall. The polished mahogany boardroom table was ringed by leather chairs to accommodate the entire assemblage, who were provided with identical place settings of a pad, pen, and a glass of water. Coffee and an assortment of French pastries were on a Chippendale sideboard against the wall.

  “First item of new business on the agenda,” said Brundage, after they had voted unanimously to accept the minutes of the previous meeting, “is the status of the Harmonium Hall project.”

  Taking his cue, Alvin Chynoweth, chair of the hall subcommittee, began his report. Chynoweth had made his fortune as a minority owner of King Kone, a company that sold orange traffic cones and barrels to New York City and neighboring municipalities, that were used to cordon off areas of road repair and construction in the greater metropolitan area. He had retired at the age of forty-one to go into a new field, private investing. His one client was himself, and he had done very well for his client, compounding his wealth as he invested in road, bridge, and building projects—including Harmonium Hall—around the region.

  “We’re still on target for the hall to open as scheduled. The two most important components are essentially done, the auditorium and Freedom Bridge. I’m pleased to report that the engineers have tested the acoustics and have concluded that they are second to none, and the orchestra’s artistic advisory committee has also given it their blessing, no mean feat. Freedom Bridge is all done but for the safety rails. There have been some general delays, as anyone walking through the building can see, but we plugged most of those into our timetable back when we first projected the construction schedule. There will still be some unfinished work to be completed after the first concert, but they’ll just be minor cosmetic details, and we’ve got the workers going full tilt until it’s done.”

  “Aren’t safety rails of conside
rable importance,” asked Imogene Livenstock, chair of the capital campaign committee, in whose veins ran the bluest of blood of New York’s old families, “especially for a pedestrian bridge?”

  “I’ll let Lars respond to that,” said Chynoweth.

  “Absolutely,” said Symington. “And I guarantee it will be finished by the downbeat of the concert.”

  “I would hope it would be completed before the downbeat,” said Livenstock. “It would create quite a splash if someone fell in the river on the way to the concert.”

  When the laughter died, Symington repeated his assurance that all would be in order.

  The design of Freedom Bridge had been the most contentious aspect of the entire plan. It was conceived as a twin to the Charles Bridge in Prague, which had been pedestrian-only for decades, unable to bear the weight of modern motorized traffic. There had been objections to the notion of moving crowds of two thousand people from the Lower Manhattan mainland to Harmonium Hall and back without the ability to drive on the bridge. SSW had expected that most people would take public transportation to the bridge and then walk across but were told in no uncertain terms their assumption was pie in the sky, and they had also neglected provisions for obvious things like inclement weather and access for the disabled. SSW professed that they had been misunderstood; their plan had been only preliminary, though in reality these contingencies had escaped their “vision.” They labored over possible alternatives, delaying the entire construction schedule, but eventually devised a multifaceted solution that supplemented the pedestrian bridge with a subway stop, a bus stop, and a parking lot on the Manhattan side from which concertgoers could be shuttled to the hall by an extensive fleet of water taxis and ferries. To make this plan a reality, they had to strenuously lobby the MTA and City Hall, undertake studies of the shifting currents of the Hudson River, and work with the Port Authority of New York to make sure they were not in violation of any shipping lanes.

  “Cost overruns?” asked Brundage.

  “Inevitably. But we’re only ten percent over budget,” said Chynoweth.

  “Isn’t that troubling? You’re talking about a negative variance of five million dollars, more or less, and we’ve got ongoing contract negotiations with the musicians. ‘Only ten percent’ might not be easy to paper over. Adrianne, what about that?”

  “Yes, we may need to reconsider fixed labor costs in that light, and we’ll do what we have to do. Right now the musicians represent about fifty-six percent of our budget, but fifty percent sounds like a nice round number to me.”

  “Alvin?”

  “I didn’t mean to minimize the overrun, Comstock, but the crucial thing is to have the hall up and running. We’ve negotiated with the construction firm and they’ve cut us some slack on materials, and your bank has agreed to revisit the terms of financing the project. We also have some unrestricted gifts in the endowment that we can play around with and fold into the building fund. But we have to keep our eye on the prize and get it done because the opening is tied to the capital campaign.”

  “That sounds like a segue to me,” Brundage said, pleased to have used musical jargon, though he knew little else about music.

  “I suppose that means it’s my turn,” said Imogene Livenstock. “I’m happy to report that we will be ready to publicly announce the commencement of our one-hundred-million-dollar campaign at the opening concert gala. We have solid commitments for thirty million and estate-planning pledges for another twenty-five, so we’re right on target.”

  “How solid is solid?” asked Brundage. “You’re reporting a big jump since the last meeting, if I recall correctly.”

  “You do recall correctly,” said Livenstock. “Since last month I’ve been able to persuade—”

  “You mean twist a few arms?” asked Brundage.

  “Who, little ol’ me?” asked Livenstock, batting her eyelashes, receiving more laughs from around the table. Good old Imogene.

  “I’ve locked in a five-million-dollar pledge from the Grimsley family,” she continued. “They’re eager, and now ready, to buy their way back into the good graces of New York society after that fiasco with the Grimsley violin competition. And we’ve another two and a half from Bedřich Czsonka, a fellow Czech expatriate of Maestro’s who has done very well in pharmaceuticals and wants to express his appreciation for what Maestro has done for freedom in their homeland.”

  “Any strings attached?” asked Brundage, who, on a roll with his musical wit, gave his inflection a jaunty little upward twist.

  “Only that the gifts are contingent upon the hall opening,” said Livenstock. “Czsonka’s will go toward the endowment of the music director position and he wants to be recognized at the gala for it. But as Alvin said, that’s a slam dunk.”

  “Bedřich is good people,” added Alvin, “and his firm doubled its dividend last year.”

  “Do you have any concerns that this is a house of cards?” asked Devlin Forrester, a former CPA and chair of the finance subcommittee. “What if the hall doesn’t open on time and some of these gifts fall through? What happens to the capital campaign? The orchestra?”

  “We’re not going to go there, Devlin,” said Brundage. “At this point that’s unnecessary speculation. As Imogene says, everything is on target.”

  “Yes and no,” said Forrester. He took a sip of water and looked down at his notes. “Yes, because we are approaching our budgeted goals, but no, because we budgeted in a one-point-eight-million deficit, and our accumulated debt is approaching four million. We may well have a cash flow problem in about seven months—before revenue from the next year’s subscribers kicks in—even if everything goes as planned. Artistic considerations aside, we can’t have any more concert cancellations like we just had at Tanglewood.”

  All eyes turned to Vaclav Herza, who until this point had his closed. He leveled his gaze at Forrester and said, “If you think I am going to compromise artistic integrity for your nickels and dimes, think again. The concert was canceled because rehearsal time was stolen from me by the musicians in their so-called collective-bargaining agreement with our management—an agreement with which I was neither participant nor signatory, I might add—and by the Boston Symphony, which feels that it is more profitable to spend my rehearsal time kowtowing to a pop man with a guitar. That they would transport in three truckloads of electronic equipment for a pop man rather than pursue the interests of serious music shows where their interests lie. So don’t expect that your stares are going to change me. If not for Herza, we would not be here today. Go find your shekels elsewhere.”

  “Maestro, we would never ask you to concern yourself about costs,” Brundage intervened. “You are the artist and it’s our job—the job of the board and management—to support your vision. It is appropriate at this time to turn the meeting over to Adrianne, who has chaired the strategic-planning committee for the past six months. I believe you have a presentation, Adrianne?”

  “That’s right, Comstock,” said Vickers. “But before the presentation, I’d just like to make a few preliminary remarks.

  “Symphony orchestras everywhere are at a historical turning point. Studies by ASOL—”

  “Asshole, Adrianne?” asked Brundage, perplexed.

  “The American Symphony Orchestra League, Comstock. Their recent report indicates that the old, worn-out model of playing orchestral music by DWEMs is no longer sustainable with today’s audiences.”

  “DWEMs?” asked Imogene.

  “Dead white European males. Your Mozarts, your Tchaikovskys, your Beethovens.”

  “Young lady,” said Herza, “I don’t recall there being more than one Beethoven.”

  “I’m just making a point, Vaclav. Yes, their music is great. No one questions that. But audiences are tired of it week in and week out in the same traditional format. We need to invent a new paradigm for the twenty-first century.

  “Today, Harmonium is at a crossroads. Not only do we face the same challenges as other orchestras, we are tra
nsitioning from a tour-based to a home-based organization and need to create artistic efficiencies in our vision as we move forward. At the end of the day, the elephant in the room is the competition we face from the entire entertainment spectrum here in the city, from the New York Philharmonic to the New York Knicks. Picture the total dollars spent on leisure activity as a pie. With everything going on in the city, the entertainment dollar is sliced up more thinly here than any other metropolitan market in the country, maybe the entire world, and in order to compete we have to interface with the community in a more proactive way than ever before.

  “Our five-year strategic plan seamlessly integrates these exigencies into our future. Our contract negotiations with the musicians will reflect our new direction and our need to template a full-length concert season in a single venue, so I’d now like to turn the floor over to Loren Gardiner, vice president of DynamiCorp, one of the country’s top entertainment-consulting firms, who has been working with us tirelessly as we move forward. Loren, it’s all yours.”

  “Thank you, Adrianne. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great honor to have partnered with Adrianne and Harmonium. Let me say first that Harmonium is the greatest orchestra in the world. We at DynamiCorp have been hard at work on a PowerPoint presentation that we’ve individualized especially for you. Our theme is, ‘Put the harmony back in Harmonium,’ so let’s get started!”

  Click.

  “As Bob Dylan said, ‘The times, they are a-changin’,’ and it’s truer today than ever before.” In big bold letters, the screen that had been set up on the far wall proclaimed, THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’.

  Click.

  “Now that Harmonium has found a home after all these years, it has been our challenge to remodel the organization just as Harmonium Hall is being remodeled, so it can compete for the entertainment dollar against the likes of the Philharmonic, orchestras from around the world that visit Carnegie Hall day in and day out, and like Adrianne said, more people-friendly events like Broadway, the theater and movies, restaurants, and sports.” The screen listed some of New York’s cultural, entertainment, and recreational activities. With a wink and an engaging smile, Gardiner added, “I was recently strolling past an adult theater marquee in Times Square that was showing an ‘art film’ called”—Gardiner made air quotes—“Rex Tremendae. Not sure it was for the same clientele Harmonium markets to, but you get the idea.”