An award-winning composer gave the Brooklyn Philharmonic more than $70,000 to perform his magnum opus, only to watch in agony as the cash-strapped orchestra “butchered” the piece to avoid paying musicians overtime, a new lawsuit alleges.
Wait. He paid the orchestra to play his work? Am I totally out of it? Do composers do this? The whole story is pretty darn weird.
Read the whole thing and puzzle over it with me.
This sounds like a horrible calamity to me. The composer probably paid the orchestra because it sounds like the piece took up the whole concert and he wanted a pro-orchestra to perform/record it. Suing the orchestra won’t help his career IMHO although it does put him in the spotlight (yikes). I wonder if he did try to get them to reschedule playing the whole piece at another concert but the orchestra couldn’t afford to pay musicians again. I can’t imagine paying $70,000 and then having it premiered like that. I feel sorry for the composer and musicians. Not sure if I feel sorry for the administrators who decided to do what they did. Maybe I don’t know the whole story.