NEW YORK LETTER
For the first time in thirty-eight years, John Williams has not come to Tanglewood. The famous conductor, composer of the music of Star Wars, was a regular at this very chic music festival tucked away in Massachusetts, between Boston and New York. To listen to classical music, jazz, but also pop. The winner of five Oscars used to stay at the Blantyre, a patrician residence from the end of the 19th century.e century, and to compose there the hundreds of film scores that made it famous.
Covid-19 requires, at 88, Williams stayed at home in Los Angeles, and had sent a message and some piano notes in the spring. The organizer of places since 1937, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, tried to save the music, by organizing a virtual festival. Without the 350,000 annual visitors, and without the celebrities who flocked from all over the world.
Nonetheless, Mark Volpe, director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) for twenty-three years, has managed to broadcast 76 programs, with 13 million views, including some paying which allowed the sale of 40,000 virtual tickets.
They had an air of Tanglewood, with the distribution of archives (with his former conductors Seiji Ozawa or John Williams) but also the creation of new content: artists from Boston and New York made the round trip during the day on square – “The only advantage of the Covid is that there were no more traffic jams”, jokes Volpe – while the others were recording from home in San Francisco, London or Copenhagen.
Sixty air filter machines
This summer, Mark Volpe hopes that the orchestra will be able to find its audience at Tanglewood, which has the advantage of being held outdoors. It would be the first time since March 2020; since then, the BSO has been locked in the closed doors of its Boston auditorium.
The year has been appalling: the institution which employed 1,300 people, including 300 full-time, slashed its staff with 100 musicians and 130 administrative staff. “The musicians accepted a 37% pay cut. Minimum wage increased from $ 160,000 to $ 120,000 [de 130 000 à 98 000 euros] per year and I have halved my salary “, explains by Zoom Mark Volpe.
Due to a lack of ticketing, the budget fell from $ 105 million to $ 47 million, and we had to seek support from donors, who contributed almost $ 61 million, half more than in previous years. The orchestra, whose numbers exceeded 500 like those of Chicago and Los Angeles, was not entitled to the assumption of its payroll by the federal state, but the BSO has the advantage of ‘sitting on a $ 450 million war chest. “Everyone is thinking long term here in Boston. Harvard, MIT, Boston Symphony Orchestra ”, explains Volpe.
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