News Gerry and the Symphony Redux
posted by on December 16 at 13:43 PM
Prompted by a lawsuit - slated for trial in January - against the Seattle Symphony, The New York Times updates and recapitulates the controversy surrounding conductor Gerard Schwarz. It looks like a grim winter ahead for the maestro: the Seattle P-I reported that Schwarz recently fractured his ankle.
My own take on the long-simmering dissent withing the Symphony is here; the brevity of my piece omits Gerry’s impressive ability to fulfill the other all-important requirement of a symphony conductor, which is to attact and sustain substantial donations. Gerry still has a golden touch, so barring a major scandal or an irresistible job offer elsewhere, he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
I could care less about the Seattle Symphony, but this line from the NYT article tells me all I need to know:
"The current court case was brought by Mr. Kaman, a violinist in the orchestra since 1981. He charged that the orchestra had discriminated against him because of a disability: severe anxiety disorder"
In other words, this neurotic douchebag whiner is causing trouble because he isn't treated extra special due to his 'disability'. Take a hike, loser.
Hey Chris,
This IS a major scandal. Hopefully he's gone soon. The entire readership of the NY Times knows the scoop: fired by Mostly Mozart, Tokyo Bunkamura, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Seattle's audiences and musicians won't have to put with this uninteresting, untalented and stultifying conductor for that much longer.
Ed Williams
As a long time member of the Seattle symphony, I have to assert that the NY Times article accurately reflects the morale of the orchestra and the musicians’ frustration with the SSO board. That said, what the article omitted was that the allegations of “orchestral terrorism” were investigated by a 3rd party, hired by management and union, and turned up no conclusive evidence. This was never reported in the local press.
But the article is not about Mr. Cerminaro; that is just a symptom of the greater problem of what can happen when a music director stays too long. Any intelligent person can see from the current atmosphere that the relationship between Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony is no longer working. Under the current music director, the Seattle Symphony has had many triumphs, but few of them have had anything to do with music; the fact is, in the last decade the symphony has stagnated under this music director because there’s NO “THERE” THERE. Hearing the orchestra under a guest conductor is enough to prove that with fresh, inspired leadership, the Seattle Symphony could be great indeed. With a survey stating 61-8 that new leadership is needed, one can no longer say that it’s just a few disgruntled musicians! Too bad it has come to this.
"...irresistible job offer elsewhere" - Christopher, you are out of touch with reality. Jerry's career outside of Seattle is over. This season he doesn't have any guest conducting gigs. Future looks similar. He completely destroyed any credibility in the music world. Seattle is Jerry's Stalingrad and he'll be fighting for his survival till the bitter end. How sad...
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