Free They Told Me Not to Take that Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center by Reynold Levy

time to conceive and to implement, but the framework for its creation started on day one of year one. So did the notion of expanding the board of directors. I also set in motion task forces of trustees and executives from firms like McKinsey and UBS to help me think through how best to acquire federal and state funds to pay for redevelopment and how to maximize rental income from the venues that Lincoln Center owned and operated.
    Even higher on my list of priorities was puzzling out what would be contained in the package of incentives that could move constituents from spectator seats to the playing field of redevelopment. What might convert them from opponents or passive bystanders to active participants?
    That analytical challenge was sitting out there just waiting to be seized when reality intruded in June 2002. It came in the surprising form of a labor strike by the musicians of the Mostly Mozart Orchestra.
    I WAS STARTLED by this sudden development. The Mostly Mozart Festival was a well-known Lincoln Center creation. Its featured ensemble in this widely emulated summer production has always been the Mostly Mozart Orchestra, which consisted of fine freelance musicians who were the best paid in the country. Their demand was not related to pay, or fringe benefits, or working conditions. Rather, they insisted on an outsized role in any decision about the possible dismissal of an existing player deemed by the music director to be performing below par and in the selection of new musicians to fill any vacancies. It appeared that the union players of the Mostly Mozart Orchestra intended to send management a message. But what was it?
    Until recently, the Mostly Mozart Orchestra had been conducted by Gerard Schwarz, whose tenure lasted seventeen years. I knew Schwarz very well. In 1978, while I was executive director of the 92nd Street Y, Omus Hirshbein, the resident impresario and my close colleague, created and then nurtured the Y Chamber Symphony. We asked Schwarz to be its maestro. He performed very ably in that role, and as far as Icould tell from a distance, he was also successful as the conductor of the Mostly Mozart Orchestra, particularly in his first decade on the job. However, by the time I arrived at Lincoln Center in 2002, Gerry’s contract had not been renewed, and for the summer of 2001 the orchestra played with a series of guest conductors. The musicians anxiously awaited the decision of Jane Moss, Lincoln Center’s vice president for programs, about who his successor would be.
    Anxiety was mixed with trepidation. The critical reviews of the orchestra in Gerry’s last years had not been favorable, and the orchestra’s audience had begun to erode significantly. Early in its history, the festival ran for seven weeks. Reduced demand for tickets contracted its season to six, then five, and then four weeks. Concern was expressed about whether Moss intended not only to further shorten the already truncated season, but also to dilute the centrality of the orchestra in the festival’s offerings. As an arts presenter, Moss was adept at bringing to Lincoln Center all kinds of excellent chamber ensembles, early music groups, chamber symphonies, vocal artists, and even modern dance troupes to enhance the festival. There were rumors, some of which reached the press, that the orchestra might simply disappear.
    The message, then, seemed to be that the musicians of the orchestra wished to protect each other against dismissal and intended to exert control over the selection of future personnel. To me and to Moss, that meant any new conductor’s authority would be diminished even before he or she could raise a baton. This demand seemed untenable. We both examined carefully the contracts of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and other leading American ensembles with their musicians. In some, there was language about management’s obligation to consult with musicians on vacancies or seek the advice of