So, did ANYONE here read the article? It’s not the LCO decided not to pay. Barclays froze their accounts without warning in an effort to weed out fraud. It happened to several other non-profits as well.
So, did ANYONE here read the article?
That’s a rhetorical question, right?
Honestly, the title is a click bait title. I read the article and the title could have been more topical with the same amount of words. It’s a bullshit title. Oh hey it’s the Guardian.
Sorry for tacking in with an unrelated question, but as someone who isn’t from an English-speaking country, could you elaborate as to what your last phrase means? Is the guardian considered a bad news outlet? I had the vague impression the brand was associated with more or less “better” quality reporting and/or journalism in general, and can remember donating to them years ago. I now wonder if something has changed of if I was supporting something bad in my ignorance 😕
The guardian has a tendency to have alarmist headlines.
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Ain’t nobody got time for dat.
They should have walked out when the first payment was missed.
The trouble, she said, stemmed from a decision by Barclays Bank to freeze the orchestra’s account – a problem that has also seriously affected the finances of charities and other cultural and religious groups, including the classical music venue, St John’s Smith Square. Under the bank’s obligation to help prevent financial crime it had requested further information from some customers in order to keep their accounts active.
Efforts to reopen the account, frozen by Barclays “with no prior warning”, said Lightfoot, took four months. “We kept the musicians informed during this period that their payment would go out as soon as the account was reopened, but as the timeline of the reopening was further delayed many times, it was difficult to provide musicians with a clear timeframe,” she said. Musicians have also been asked to come forward with any outstanding invoices.
I imagine the musicians were just trying to help the orchestra survive, and expecting it would be sorted out any day soon.
The article makes no mention of why the account was frozen in the first place.
Barclays don’t need a reason, they are utter shits.
This is from a link in the main article …
“Like the others you have featured, the bank asked us for directors’ details as part of their regulatory obligations to know their customers,” she says. “We believe that we complied with all their requests but despite that the account of 15 years was just frozen. No warning, and all our direct debits cancelled just like that.
A Barclays spokesperson says: “As part of our ongoing responsibility to help prevent financial crime, and to meet our regulatory obligations, we are required to keep up-to-date information regarding our customers’ accounts. We share a series of communications with our customers, including writing to them by post, through alert banners on our digitally active customers’ online and mobile banking, as well as reminder SMS text messages and emails, asking customers to supply us with some important information relating to their Barclays Business accounts.”
In my decades of working for software companies and dealing with clients, I have had many conversations that went something like…
Client: We need the software to do _____.
Me: No problem. That’s a common request and can be set up in the configuration. I just need [ some specific information that only the client can provide ] from you to set it up. It’ll only take me a few minutes.
… crickets …
Several months later…
Client: WHY HAVEN’T YOU DONE THIS YET? MY BOSS IS SCREAMING AT ME! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!
I can’t help but imagine something like that happened here. They’ve probably been repeatedly requesting this information for months, and whomever is responsible for providing it for the orchestra is just incompetent.
No. There is a linked article in the main one that disproves your assumption.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/dec/09/charities-barclays-frozen-bank-accounts
Your absolutely right, people have a sense of family/community with their workplace co-workers which is why its so easy to “take one for the team” and skip a paycheck.
This is why its necessary to tell people to walk as soon as the money stops, so they don’t fall deeper into the hole. A reasonable business will understand their people need to get paid, and if they sort out their finances will take back their employees even if they had to pursue other ventures during the insolvency.
It’s extremely difficult to get a position playing in an orchestra - the competition is fierce. I imagine this is also a consideration: when you get a job like that, you really don’t want to give it up lightly because you’ve spent your whole life training for it and you don’t know when or whether you’ll get another one.
Orchestra positions are often jobs that these people will keep for life or until a seat in a new orchestra opens up. There’s an extremely limited number of jobs. I had a fairly distant cousin audition for the Seattle Symphony, for the single open trumpet seat there were north of 200 applicants. It’s such an incredibly competitive field that if you walk out, you might just possibly never get back in.
I got a donation request in the mail for my city’s opera. Why would I donate to something I can’t afford to go see? Something that wealthy people love but won’t donate to save? The tickets go for like $300 each where I live and you can’t pay the musicians?
The tickets go for like $300 each
Damn that’s a lot. The symphony and ballet in my city are much more reasonable, you can get cheap seats for like $40 and decent seats for $60
and you can’t pay the musicians?
This story is about a bank freezing a symphony’s accounts. Is that happening where you live too? God help us if people just read this headline and immediately jump to “symphony orchestras are bad”
TLDR: US operas tickets $35-350, symphony tickets $35-200. There are reasonable prices if you’re interested.
Classical music is expensive, and ticket sales rarely even cover half of an orchestra’s operating budget. The rest comes from wealthy donors. An arts organization asking for donations is standard practice.
Tickets are sold in a wide range of prices depending on the seat. I’ve done a little digging on ticket price ranges of major US cities that have both operas and orchestras.
Seattle Symphony $35-135 LA Phil $20-190 Dallas Symphony $46-253 Chicago Symphony $49-250 NY Phil $72-180
Seattle Opera $67-399 LA Opera $34-346 Dallas Opera $19-482 Lyric Opera of Chicago $41-297 Metropolitan Opera $47-465
In addition, most orchestras have much cheaper rush tickets or discount codes. If you are interested in classical music but can’t afford the tickets look into these options.
When the previous commenter said tickets are $300 I got suspicious. Though opera companies do sell $300 tickets those are near the top of the price range.
Also check out local smaller orchestras, my local one has $10 tickets, with $5 tickets available for students, and it’s one of the bigger orchestras in the state
In Glasgow you can see the RSNO for less than £30, I was also surprised that it wasn’t all toffs in dinner suits, there were all sorts of people there and casual dress is OK!
Every single US orchesta has some page on their website reassuring newcomers that they don’t need to dress formal. Most don’t even wear tuxedos on stage anymore.
The assumption that classical music is off-puttingly formal is one that not accurate, at least not anymore.
Months‽
Why would anyone stay passed a single unpaid check?
As soon as they realize you’ll work for no pay, they’ll keep working you with no pay.If there’s any job I’d stick it out a while for, it would be for the LCO. That would be a dream job and likely is for the people doing it. It’s not like retail where I’d give them like 1 paycheck to get their shit together before walking.
But it’s if course not excusable for them not to be paid.
Employers still owe you for work performed even if they are currently unable. They continued to work because the orchestra owes them back pay for all the previous work once they get the account back.
The London Chamber Orchestra is a union orchestra. The musicians will have discussed the situation. Continuing to work is a sensible choice, for a time.
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this country is fucked
You realise this is not happening in your country, right?
Well, you see, in countries with actual social safety nets, you can pretty comfortably go without a paycheck or two.
Apparently the bank froze the orchestra’s account for these months
Same banks that keep oligarchs in yachts and harems suddenly become conservative when it comes to the arts.
Emergency backup is called to enable London Chamber Orchestra event at Cadogan Hall to go ahead after protest over payment delays.
Scabs
Good for the musicians.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The trouble, she said, stemmed from a decision by Barclays Bank to freeze the orchestra’s account – a problem that has also seriously affected the finances of charities and other cultural and religious groups, including the classical music venue, St John’s Smith Square.
“We understand the monumental strain on this body of freelancers whose opportunities to work have been reduced and jeopardised due to sweeping cuts to orchestral funding,” said Lightfoot this weekend.
The musicians also work with the Music Junction education programme to promote “leadership, community and inclusion by providing opportunities for children”.
The account shutdowns threatened the work of the Surrey-based Clockwork charitable trust and the Ogmore Valley Male Voice Choir, among others.
Customers are also required to inform the bank in a timely manner of any change to their legal status relating to their business, charity or trust.”
The LCO, which two years ago dropped the requirement for formal dress for its musicians so that they could express their “individual personalities and backgrounds”, is committed to “breaking down barriers to orchestral music and making a positive impact on the community”.
The original article contains 675 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It is astounding to me how much power a bank has to close to just put a hold on your account. Almost as if there is a preverse incentive to do so.
So yeah LCO gets broken but some Russian gangsters get to move money with immunity.
