Talk:Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra

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The proposed text is heavily based on source material deemed unreliable and, therefore, the changes cannot be made. Please cite reliable sources. Best regards, --Johannes (Talk) (Contribs) (Articles) 19:44, 27 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Specific text to be added or removed: All text below these first three lines that are part of the request edit template
 * Reason for the change: This is a major expansion of the article, including discussions of past and present programming, many new citations, and citations for the ongoing labor dispute.
 * References supporting change: 32/39 citations are new, all are new save #3,5,6,7,8,38,39.

The Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The orchestra's primary concert venues are the Embassy Theatre and the Auer Performance Hall at Purdue University Fort Wayne (PFW). The orchestra's current Music Director is Andrew Constantine, and the musicians are represented by the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Players Association, American Federation of Musicians Local 58. The Fort Wayne Philharmonic Chorus is affiliated with the orchestra, and its current director is Benjamin Rivera.

History
The Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1944, and gave its first concert on October 18, 1944, at the Palace Theatre. The first music director was the German-born Hans Schwieger (1907-2000). Under Schwieger's direction, the orchestra featured such soloists as William Kapell, Yehudi Menuhin, and Mario Lanza.

In the summer of 1948, Igor Buketoff became the orchestra's second music director, and served in the post until 1966, the longest serving music director to date. Successive music directors have been James Sample (1967-1970) and Thomas Briccetti (1970-1977). From 1978 to 1993, the orchestra's music director was Ronald Ondrejka (1932-2016). During Ondrejka's tenure, the orchestra’s ensemble tripled in size to 42 full-time musicians, and new programming initiatives included regular collaboration with the Fort Wayne Ballet.

Edvard Tchivzhel succeeded Ondrejka as music director in 1993, and served in the post until the end of the 2007-08 season. Jaime Laredo served as artistic advisor for the 2008-09 season, in the absence of a full-time music director, while several guest conductors auditioned throughout the season. The English conductor Andrew Constantine was named the orchestra's next music director in July 2009 after a yearlong open audition process. His contract with the orchestra was extended through 2020 in 2015, and then renewed again until 2025.

Present Programming
Since 1980, the orchestra has won five awards for adventuresome programming from ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers). The regular season for the orchestra has historically been for nine months, from September through May. The regular season is divided into several different series. The flagship “Masterworks” series typically involves the 60+ member full-time orchestra with additional per-service musicians, performing symphonies, concertos, and suites that require the full ensemble. As the flagship, seasons traditionally begin and conclude with Masterworks performances. In the 2019-2020 season, which was cut short due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, ten Masterworks concerts were planned: A “ Tchaikovsky Spectactular,” Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, “Violins of Hope” (a Holocaust memorial concert), Peer Gynt and Polovtsian Dances, [guest performer] Pinchas Zukerman plays Brahms,  Ravel’s Bolero, Carmina Burana, “ Mozart and Two Pianos,” “Beethoven’s Violin,”, and “ Constantine Conducts Shostakovich.”

The other annual series that uses the full strength of the orchestra is the Sweetwater Pops, which focuses on more recent compositions, such as movie soundtracks or popular music (such as the Beatles). For the 2019-2020 season, six concerts were planned (though some consisted of multiple performances). They were “Rudy in Concert with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic” (a live performance of the music from the movie “Rudy” while it was projected above the stage), the Holiday Pops (more below), “Piano Themes from Cinema’s Golden Age,” “ Purdue” Varsity Glee Club sings Broadway,” “A Cole Porter Celebration in Concert with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic & Civic Theatre,” and “Abba: The Concert.”

Complementing these more extensive series are the three-per-year Family Series. These shorter (~1 hour) concerts focus on themed events aimed at young audiences, like a performance around a local legend. In the season for 2019-2020, the planned Family concerts were a “Halloween Spooktacular,” “Flying with ET and Peter Pan,” and “Pirates of the Sea.”

One smaller ensemble of permanent standing is the Freimann (String) Quartet, a traditional two-violin, viola, and cello quartet that plays in smaller venues, often with added woodwinds. The 2019-2020 program planned a quartet of quartets, with concerts of “Music from The Marriage of Fiagro,” the  Brahms Clarinet Quintet, “Freimann Quartet plays Beethoven,” and “Bliss.”

Between Thanksgiving and the New Year, the Philharmonic performs an annual “Holiday Pops” series. Performances are held in high school gymnasia, theatres, and local concert halls across Northeast Indiana. The traveling orchestra typically includes lead vocalists or narrators throughout (as the programming requires), assisted by either a subsidiary of the Philharmonic Chorus, or local singers. The series concludes with performances at the Embassy Theatre and often feature the entire Chorus. The traditional encore performed is Handel's  Hallelujah Chorus, throughout which the audience remains standing.

A chamber orchestra from the full Philharmonic regularly performs summer concerts in Fort Wayne and Northeast Indiana more generally. Regular performances are made to locales within an hour of the city for a summer concert series called “Patriotic Pops.” The largest performance of this series is held yearly on the third of July at Parkview Field in downtown Fort Wayne, culminating in fireworks during the 1812 Overture and Stars and Stripes Forever. Members of the orchestra have also participated in the "Summer Symphony", founded by Joseph M. Woods in 1956, who played with the Philharmonic from 1948 to 1950. Concerts have taken place at the Foellinger Theatre in Franke Park, led by former principal trombonist David Cooke, guest conductors, and associate conductors on varied occasions.

Past Programming
From 1982 until the 2020-2021 season, the Spectrum Series Chamber Orchestra regularly performed symphonic works requiring a smaller 40-50 member orchestra. The Chamber Orchestra was originated by a $1 million grant from the Frank Freimann Charitable Trust, which also established the Freimann Quartet. This series originally consisted of eight performances per year, though by the 2020-2021 season featured only one performance. A late-1980s grant from the Foellinger Foundation was then matched by a $2 million endowment campaign to permanently double the full-time staff from 19 to 37 musicians, primarily benefiting the chamber orchestra. Later funds increased the size further, and by the 2020-2021 season, there were 45 permanent members of the chamber orchestra. The 2019-2020 season of the Chamber Orchestra had four concerts planned, Durufle’s Requiem, “ Messiah by Candlelight,” “Winner Conducts Mozart,” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Fort Wayne Ballet.”

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the “Unplugged” concerts were a series performed at the Arts United Center (previously the Performing Arts Center). These concerts were lighter in tone and more informal – musicians performed in shirtsleeves. This series began in 1996, and often featured innovations such as live video projections of the orchestra on a screen over the stage, providing alternative angles on the musicians and conductor for the audience. Unplugged performances typically included classical repertoire that were lighter in tone, such as Camille Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals,  Verdi’s Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore, or even the  Leroy Anderson's The Typewriter. After the 2009-2010 season, the Unplugged series was discontinued.

Labor Disputes
The relationship between the orchestra and its musicians has been fraught since the mid-2000s. After having exceptional stability in Executive Directors (two between 1976-2006) and Musical Directors/Principal Conductors (two between 1978-2008), the turnover in executive and musical leadership has strained the relationship. With the 2008 Recession, donations and revenue declined, and the financial outlook for the Philharmonic worsened, resulting in a decreased number of services and slowed growth. Compensation for the musicians has steadily declined since 2008, with repeated concessions by performers and schedule cut-backs. Despite the challenges facing the Philharmonic budget, executive compensation has doubled.

In 2013, due to a $2.5 million budget shortfall, negotiations between management and the musicians resulted in a temporary decrease in compensation. This agreement reduced the orchestra's season from 40 weeks per year to 33 weeks per year for the 2013-2015 seasons, and reduced the number of full-time positions. The contract also stipulated a return to full-strength and a full season within three years and an additional violin position hired in 2019-2020. The Philharmonic operated without a collective bargaining agreement from 2014-2017, only signing a new 3 year deal retroactively in 2017 for the Fall 2016-2018 seasons.

The Philharmonic’s response to the COVID-19 Pandemic rankled the musicians of the orchestra. In July 2020, managing director James Palermo instituted sharp and permanent cuts to the program and performer compensation. The musical program was immediately canceled through January 2021, while musicians were placed on furlough, including a suspension of employer health insurance contributions. The negotiation position of the Philharmonic was that no cuts to staff compensation or positions were possible, but that the reduction from 63 to 15 contracted musicians was necessary. Throughout the shutdown (which lasted into early 2021), Philharmonic staff and executives were fully compensated. During the furlough, scab musicians were hired for services around Fort Wayne.

This disconnect in compensation, paired with bad faith negotiations, formed the basis for a labor dispute by the musicians against the Philharmonic. Three unfair labor practice suits were filed by the Players with the National Labor Relations Board, two of which were later sustained. The American Federation of Musicians placed the Philharmonic on the International Unfair List on November 16, 2020, due to the Philharmonic’s bad faith efforts to cut costs. In February 2021, the National Labor Relations Board issued a formal complaint against the Philharmonic, as it "presented and subsequently withdrew bargaining proposals; reneged on tentative agreements and attempted to bargain from scratch; and submitted regressive proposals." Despite the concerns raised by management, the Philharmonic’s net assets doubled from 2008-2022 to approximately $30 million after a capital campaign, against operating expenses of ~$3 million/year. The 2022-2023 season began under an expired contract established early in 2021 as negotiations progressed on a more permanent agreement.

Initial demands from the Philharmonic were for a 60% salary reduction in 2020 from musicians, but they countered with a 22% reduction for all employees including staff. Following a reduction in pay of 15%, in late 2022, the Philharmonic asked for a new collective bargaining agreement that would make permanent pay cuts to musicians, with a new base salary for full-time musicians of $22,060. Additionally, negotiations progressed requiring a reduction of the permanent musical personnel to 19 members. This was accompanied by a 50% reduction in services vs the 2018-2019 season, while still requiring 52-week availability for musicians.

As a result of these demands, as of 4 pm on December 8th, 2022, the Philharmonic Musicians went on strike. This is the first strike in the history of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. Notable editorials on the subject of the strike were published in the days following, including notable offerings from musician and lawyer Kevin Case, and Christopher Guerin, former President of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic and recently-retired Vice President of Corporate Communications from Sweetwater Sound. Attorney Case focuses on arts law and argues in an editorial on his website as well as in a newspaper editorial that there was no financial necessity for the cuts to salaries, due to the appreciation of the Philharmonic endowment from 2018 to 2021, and that musician demands are modest by comparison to the cuts made in recent years. The editorial by Guerin claims that the actions of the Philharmonic Executive Board is an existential threat. He notes that the decade of 2013-2022 has been one of continual disputes with management and the reduction of concerts to a rate half that of the beginning of this time. He noted the necessity of cuts during the pandemic, but alleged that the permanence of the steps being proposed by management implied a vision of an amateur orchestra, rather than the professional body that currently exists.

Broadcasts and recordings
Tchivzhel and the orchestra recorded a commercial CD at the Honeywell Center in Wabash, which includes Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 and Richard Strauss' symphonic poem Don Juan.

The Philharmonic made a new commercial recording during a concert in the Auer Performance Hall at Purdue-Fort Wayne on March 18, 2018, devoted to three works by the Austrian-American composer Walter Bricht (1904-1970).

Performances are often rebroadcast on a delay by local National Public Radio affiliates, typically WBNI 89.1-2.

Music Directors

 * Hans Schwieger (1944–1948)
 * Igor Buketoff (1948–1966)
 * James Sample (1967–1970)
 * Thomas Briccetti (1970–1977)
 * Ronald Ondrejka (1978–1993)
 * Edvard Tchivzhel (1993–2008)
 * Andrew Constantine (2010–present)

Executive directors (partial list)

 * Peter Smith (1976–1985)
 * Christopher D. Guerin (1985–2005)
 * Daniel Ross (interim, 2005–2006)
 * J.L. Nave (2006–2014)
 * James Palermo (2015–2022)
 * Brittany Hall (2022–Present)

Note on sources
Eyewitness accounts by Robert E. Nylund form part of the reference material for this article.

Atchemey (talk) 07:03, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Newest edits
Some more detailed points about my edit to the orchestra's page (which may be more for wikipedian sallyrob than anyone else): (1) I have inferred the starting year of Constantine's tenure as music director as 2010, based on the announcement in December 2015 of his contract extension which stated that Constantine is in his sixth season with the orchestra. Working backwards from that, the inference is that his first full season as music director was the 2010-2011 season. Thus the 2015-2016 season would mark his sixth. (2) The previous edit was filled with extraneous details about affiliated conductors that had absolutely nothing to do with the orchestra itself. Thus that material has been removed. (3) The blow-by-blow process of the hiring of the most recent music director, whilst interesting in terms of historical detail, is more appropriate for a full book about the orchestra. It is not germane to wikipedia, and thus has been removed. (4) The listing of each season's programmes, in particular the recent seasons with Constantine, is also completely irrelevant to a general history of the orchestra. Thus that material has been removed. (5) The previous version also had several repetitive passages, and generally did not follow a smooth linear narrative. My new edit corrects those. It also needs repeating that the purpose of a wikipedia article is to present 'just the facts', and not act as a partisan or PR-like page for any individual, organisation, or topic. DJRafe (talk) 06:34, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I added three of the edits: The new side box, the additions to the external links, the rebroadcast list. Many of the other recommended changes are too long, and some like the labor disputes needs extensive vetting and shortening. I won’t get involved in those but have made these more non-controversial edits. ABT021 (talk) 14:45, 27 December 2022 (UTC)