Nathan Currier sues Brooklyn Philharmonic
p2pnet news view Music:- Juilliard-trained Dr Nathan Currier says he gave the Brooklyn Philharmonic more than $70,000 to perform his environmentally themed symphony, Gaian Variations.
But its “climactic finish” became even more dramatic because of union demands which have led to a $250,000 lawsuit against the “cash strapped” orchestra.
When the “ballyhooed concert” was performed almost exactly five years ago, the unionized Brooklyn Philharmonic “lopped off” the ending, says the Brooklyn Paper.
Now Currier is suing it for $250,000, says the story, going on »»»
The complaint, filed in Kings County Supreme Court on Monday, depicts a hasty and harried scene backstage to shorten the ‘contemporary classical’ piece to avoid the orchestra’s self-imposed three-hour limit.
“During the second scheduled intermission, [Brooklyn Philharmonic CEO] Catherine Cahill called [Currier] backstage for an emergency meeting,” the court papers claim.
Cahill demanded that Currier personally pay the overtime wages or trim the work, which took him five years to compose and had already cost him $72,200 to stage. Currier claims he removed several sections of the piece, to comply with the “outrageous ‘eleventh-hour’ demands”.
But that wasn’t all, the story continues.
“Instead of playing the abridged version, the orchestra simply stopped playing at the first proposed cut and walked off stage, approximately with 15 minutes left on the clock before overtime kicked in,” it says.
But there could be a happy ending.
Currier would settle if the Philharmonic agreed to play Gaian Variations in its “unadulterated entirety,” the Brooklyn Paper has his lawyer, Alex Roshuk, saying.
Stay tuned.
Brooklyn Paper - Losing his composure!, April 14, 2009
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April 16th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
No composer should pay any performer to perform their music.
Perhaps a composer may not charge for a first performance but paying is a ridiculous proposition.
Unless the music is so bad that pay for play is the only way.
Or maybe it was a tax deduction scheme.
Imagine getting paid for eating at a restaurant, by the restaurant.
The food must be really bad and the ownr of the restaurant really wealthy.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Funny enough, I imagine the unionized Philharmonic players dropping some opera before its end, because the damned composer —some Wagner, some Meyerbeer— insisted on making them over 4 hours long!
April 16th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Unions aren’t evil, not even the currently discussed one– but there should have been an accord to which the players could have come so that the music could have played in full.
On the other hand, it’s Brooklyn. Don’t they play their instruments with an accent?