Posts Tagged ‘symphony’

Too Fast and Furious To Get A Visa!

Thursday, February 20th, 2014

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq.   

Dear Law and Disorder:

We filed a P-1 petition for an orchestra that is to perform at our venue. The petition was approved and it includes the orchestra’s conductor. However, the conductor just informed us that he does not want to go the consulate and apply for his P-1 visa (he says he just doesn’t have time for such an inconvenience.). Instead, he wants to enter as a visitor on the ESTA/Visa Waiver Program. He claims he did this when the orchestra toured the United States last year, including performing at our venue, and there was no problem, so he wants to do it again. We never realized he performed for us last year as a visitor. Are we in trouble? What if he insists on doing this again this season? What are the risks for us and for him?

Unless this is the conductor of the Hogwarts Symphony Orchestra, he seems to be laboring under the misbelief that he can waive his magic baton and dismiss anything he finds unpleasant, inconvenient, or displeasing. If only that were true.

Your situation presents several problems, the first and most immediate being that, under U.S. Immigration Law (however, inane we may all agree it is), an artist is not allowed to perform in the U.S. while on a visitor visa. Regardless of whether or not tickets are sold and regardless of whether or not the artist is paid in the U.S. or abroad (or even if the artist performs for free), no performance activities are permitted while an artist is in visitor status. Unless an artist has been admitted on an O or P visa, or has been admitted in some other applicable work authorized classification, any performances are illegal.

Technically, as the presenter/venue, you are supposed to verify the work authorization of each artist who performs for you. Had the conductor presented his visa (or lack thereof) to you last season, it would have quickly been discovered that he was not authorized to perform.  On the slim chance you were ever audited for immigration compliance, your venue could be found to have violated U.S. Immigration law by facilitating the illegal performance of a non-U.S. artist without proper work authorization. Penalties could range from fines to the greater scrutiny of future visa petitions.

I understand that, in this case, the conductor in question was able to enter the U.S on the ESTA program, perform, and leave without issue. He was lucky….and so were you. While I can see the temptation to try the same deception again, especially for a busy conductor who does not want to make a trip to a U.S. Consulate, such luck cannot continue indefinitely.

While U.S. Consular Officers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers are as vigilant as possible, they cannot catch every violator on every occasion. The situation is much like running a red light, or committing any other criminal or penal violation, without getting caught. The lack of an arrest does not make the crime any less illegal. In this case, however, the penalties for an immigration violation can be more severe than a mere traffic ticket.

For an artist, presenting oneself at the border and asking for admission as a visitor, when the artist, in fact, intends to perform illegally constitutes a fraudulent misrepresentation to a federal law enforcement officer and constitutes a felony. If caught, the artist can be subject to immediate deportation as well as restrictions on future travel, visas, and work authorization. While I am familiar with many Non-U.S. artists who have managed to sneak in and out and perform as visitors on various occasions, I am also familiar with many who have been caught, even after years of being undetected.

In one case in particular, an internationally known artist who had held multiple O-1 visas over the course of his career, found himself with an approved O-1 petition, but unable to find the time to travel to a U.S. Consulate for an interview and to receive a physical O-1 visa. Instead, he entered as a visitor. Much to the dismay of him and his management, he was discovered. Because of his notoriety and international standing, he was not deported. However, because of his attempted fraudulent entry, his visitor privileges were revoked and for the next six years he was required to seek a “waiver of inadmissibility” every time he went to a U.S. Consulate to apply for a visa. Such a waiver adds an extra 2 – 3 weeks of processing time to the issuance of a visa.

I am also familiar with a management company whose future immigration petitions have been consistently flagged for extra review and processing when it was discovered that there were knowingly assisting artists in filing deception P-1 petitions.

As you can see, I would strongly advise the conductor that the immediate temptation of avoiding the time and hassle of a trip to the consulate is outweighed by the potential loss of his ability to travel and work in the U.S. Ultimately, if he decides to continue running the red light on the assumption that he won’t get caught, you and your venue should not be required to go joy riding with him.

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For additional information and resources on this and otherGG_logo_for-facebook legal and business issues for the performing arts, visit ggartslaw.com

To ask your own question, write to lawanddisorder@musicalamerica.org.

All questions on any topic related to legal and business issues will be welcome. However, please post only general questions or hypotheticals. GG Arts Law reserves the right to alter, edit or, amend questions to focus on specific issues or to avoid names, circumstances, or any information that could be used to identify or embarrass a specific individual or organization. All questions will be posted anonymously.

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THE OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER:

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE!

The purpose of this blog is to provide general advice and guidance, not legal advice. Please consult with an attorney familiar with your specific circumstances, facts, challenges, medications, psychiatric disorders, past-lives, karmic debt, and anything else that may impact your situation before drawing any conclusions, deciding upon a course of action, sending a nasty email, filing a lawsuit, or doing anything rash!

 

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Ten Do’s and Dont’s of Career Building

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

By: Edna Landau

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

Dear Edna:

In this fast paced changeable world we live in, we artists feel like a little boat in a vast ocean, many times lost and orphans of good guidance. A wonderful legacy, and a practical one from an accomplished pro like you, would be for us new artists to have a list of ten things to focus on and a list of 10 don’ts. Would you be so generous to share that with us? —Susana Galli

Dear Ms. Galli:

It is a weighty task to come up with ten do’s and don’ts and hope that they comprise some sort of legacy! However, I have done so below, and perhaps I will follow up at a future time with a second installment.

DO’S

Spend considerable time identifying your particular strengths, soliciting input from teachers and others who know you well, in order to plan your career and performance repertoire in a way that emphasizes them.

Make sure that you have good quality, attractive photographs and that your promotional materials are well-written and always up to date. In addition, take care that any video samples you post on YouTube show you off to best advantage. Having a fine quality performance dvd, or at least a demo cd, is definitely an advantage.

Go to a healthy number of concerts, especially if you will hear music with which you are unfamiliar or performances by artists you admire who are likely to inspire you. Go backstage to meet them after the concert. It is an added plus if some of these concerts take place in untraditional venues.

Look for opportunities to perform for audiences who may not go to concert halls, and identify performance spaces that might allow you to engage with new audiences in a more informal setting. If you are aware of series, for example at a library, which present artists at your level of career development, write to them directly, proposing an attractive program that you are prepared to perform. It might be helpful to go to one of their concerts and to try to meet the director of the series in person. You can also write to institutions with whom you have been associated in the past, who might be interested in presenting you in concert (e.g., a school, competition or youth symphony).

Consider forming a chamber ensemble, especially as performance opportunities may be more numerous and competitions and residency opportunities might afford avenues for exposure.

Begin to build a list of people who might be interested in supporting special projects you plan to undertake and also identify individuals whom you would like to meet through others. Whenever you succeed in getting such meetings, be sure to read up on the person in advance so that you can ask intelligent questions and evidence your awareness of their considerable accomplishments. Be sure to let these people know of your ongoing career successes.

Look for opportunities to attend training workshops that will expand your horizons, such as those offered by Carnegie Hall. Even if you are unable to attend in person, bear in mind that some, such as Chamber Music America’s “First Tuesdays”, are archived online.

Plan to spend your summers in places where you might be noticed by established artists and industry leaders who regularly visit.

Try to meet composers, especially those of your own generation, who might welcome the opportunity to write something for you that they know will be performed.

Go the extra mile and be nice to everyone. Write a handwritten thank you note to anyone who does something nice for you. So many of the significant things that happen for artists evolve from the good relationships they have established over the years.

Dont’s

Don’t use superlatives about yourself in your bio, on your website, or in written communications with presenters.

Don’t perform a concerto or other substantial work in an important place for the first time.

Don’t enter a competition seeking greater exposure unless you feel comfortable with the process and motivated by the potential for artistic growth, and for gaining valuable performing experience, regardless of the outcome.

Don’t push too hard too soon. For example, you should only seek out management when your artistry comes across as distinctive and personal.

Don’t think of being on a management’s roster as prestigious unless the management is recognized as being effective on behalf of its artists and has earned respect and recognition in the industry.

If you have management, don’t arrange concerts on your own, thinking that the management won’t find out and you won’t have to pay commission.

Don’t record music that is not in the public domain without first exploring rights payments.

Don’t grant any rights to another party unless you understand everything about how those rights will be used and are comfortable with the terms.

Don’t let your concert attire divert the audience’s attention from the impact of your performance and affect the memory of it that they carry away with them.

Don’t address someone you don’t know by their first name, unless it’s me in my Ask Edna column!

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

© Edna Landau 2012

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Charles Anthony, No Unsung Hero

Monday, February 27th, 2012

by James Conlon

On February 15, one of the great men of opera passed away. Charles Anthony will be long remembered for the stunning statistics of his career at the Metropolitan Opera: 2,928 performances of 111 roles in 69 operas in 57 years. He appeared there more than any other artist in the Met’s history. For those who love facts and figures, his accomplishments are staggering. They can earn him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records or Ripley’s Believe It or Not. But for those of us who knew him, worked with him, and loved him, however extraordinary the numerical data, it only tells part of the story.

Charlie, as he was almost universally called, brought sunshine into the theater and the lives of his colleagues every day he went to work. He loved opera, he loved his work, and he loved his colleagues. This coming June would have marked 40 years since I first worked with him. I met him the first day of rehearsals for a production of Falstaff, which was in fact my first professional engagement to conduct an opera.

Any singing artist who holds the stage for over a half century into an advanced age is noteworthy. But it is not the quantity of performances but the quality of his shining gifts that is the essence of Charlie’s greatness. His devotion to a single institution belongs to the values another era. It is almost unheard of today among opera singers. He could have had a career singing leading roles all over the world, but chose not to. He incarnated the ideal of an ensemble singer, whose loyalty was to the team as much as, or more than, to himself.

We live in an increasingly celebrity-obsessed culture. Evolving technologies have vastly multiplied the means of distribution that promote latter-day stars. It is increasingly difficult for the public, given these means, to differentiate between notoriety and quality. At the altar of personality, we celebrate superstar singers, instrumentalists, directors, and conductors. As it is easy to overlook the fact that symphonic orchestras are made up of very accomplished individual musicians who are not in the limelight, we must remind ourselves that the core of an opera house is to be found in its orchestra, chorus, resident singers, stage and technical staff, and in the countless individuals who work behind the scenes, literally and figuratively. “Star” singers, guest soloists and conductors are rented for the duration of their visit to an institution, but do not represent its spirit. The true spirit a musical ensemble is defined by its permanent members and constituent parts.

There are many persons, not celebrities, who have devoted their lives to music and the performing arts. Their role needs to be brought back to our attention, lest we forget how essential they are. Just as it easy to overlook the importance of general practitioners, schoolteachers and team players, it is tempting to be distracted by the glamor and glitter “at the top.”

Those of us who are able to practice our art, and earn a living thereby, are among the most privileged eople on this earth. I think Charlie knew that in a very special way, and he communicated it to all around him on daily basis for over half a century. The radiance and warmth he brought to work with him every day won him universal admiration and a special place in the hearts of all of his colleagues. I never heard a bad word spoken by him, nor about him. He reminded all of us how lucky we are.

There are many others in our symphony orchestras and opera houses around the country who, like him, deserve our admiration. But for those of us who knew him, we recognize that there was only one Charles Anthony, and he is irreplaceable.

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Omus in Person

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

by Sedgwick Clark

I first met Omus Hirshbein in Carnegie Hall’s executive offices, where he worked for a brief time in 1973 between tenures at the Hunter College Concert Bureau and the 92nd Street Y. He was walking out of a planning meeting, saying in frustration to anyone nearby, “They won’t listen to me—they should be emphasizing the sound of Carnegie Hall.” Guess what Carnegie’s subscription campaign was the next season, after Omus left for the Y? There he would create a concert series that for two decades would dominate the chamber-music field in New York (and annoy the hell out of me because it was such a nuisance to get to from my apartment near Lincoln Center).

We became friends over the years, especially after buying one of his pianos several years ago when his upper West Side apartment could no longer house two Steinways. Every time my wife and her four-hands partner, the composer and conductor Victoria Bond, get together to play, we think of Omus and his wife, Jessica.

Omus died on December 31st after a long decline due to Alzheimer’s. It seems especially tragic that one whose mind was so fertile would leave us in such a manner. I’m sorry I took so long to take note of him in this forum. Perhaps I was stymied because Brian Kellow, who worked for Omus at the Y in the 1980s, captured his personality and accomplishments so warmly and vividly in an Opera News piece, as did Allan Kozinn in his New York Times obituary (January 7, 2012). So I decided I would do something different and reprint Omus’s own typically impassioned words from a panel discussion on the programming of classical music, which appeared in the 1995 Musical America Directory. Participants with Omus in the discussion were industry V.I.P.s Deborah Borda, Eugene Carr, Mary Lou Falcone, Christopher Hunt, and Jane Moss. I highly recommend your reading it; check out the Services section on top of the Musicalamerica.com desktop. You may find, as I did when I read it again, that it could have been recorded yesterday.

Omus Hirshbein: “I think there are two reasons why people like to go to concerts these days. One is being addressed by the kind of programming that the American Symphony is doing. Back in 1986 I agreed to put together a series of eight concerts for the Museum of Modern Art exhibition called “Vienna 1900.” It had to do with the years of the Vienna Secession, which are roughly 1898-1918, and the composers were Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Zemlinsky, Schmidt. And I said to them, “But no one will come.” To my surprise, tickets were being scalped on 53rd Street. I saw virtually none of the usual New York music people at those eight concerts. Audience members were reading, they were seeing the paintings, they were seeing the workshop of Hoffman, and they were hearing a group of composers described by curator Kirk Varnedoe as part and parcel of the Secession, and they went. Okay, that’s one reason.

“The other, of course, is that music is supposed to touch the heart. And it’s supposed to touch the soul. Now, there was a period of 40 or 50 years when what was new was ugly. Sorry, it was mostly ugly. And the legatees of those Viennese geniuses—and I speak of Schoenberg as a genius—made it worse. They became academic, producing a system of writing in this country that was not for the public. Now, there are some young people writing music today who are mobbed by audiences. I’m talking about Aaron Kernis, and Bright Sheng, and there are others. And maybe it signals a reversal of that horrible trend where what was new was impossible to listen to. That’s all I can hope for, because the teaching of music has become of little importance in most of the major cities today as they cope with their social and educational problems.

“Let me just add that money is really an issue. And I’m not talking about balancing budgets. On the wall in my new office is a blowup of an advertisement from 1971, announcing a repeat concert of Victoria de los Angeles and Alicia de Larrocha doing a program of Spanish tonadillas and whatnot. I ask people to look at it because it has tremendous meaning—and finally down at the bottom, they come across what is really disturbing about it. And this is 1971, folks. The top price at the Hunter College Concert Bureau, where this took place, in a 2,200-seat house, was a dollar below Carnegie Hall and a dollar below Lincoln Center: six and a half dollars. A movie was three bucks, or three and a half. A musical event of that magnitude was twice the price of a movie. And that was prevailing.

“Now, I throw down a gauntlet to the commercial interests that have ruined our business. I assure you that Mostly Mozart once was a three- and four-dollar ticket. Commercial interests, and the interests of unions, have hurt us a great deal. This not a high-tech business, this is not the movies, this is not mass media, and we are paying the kind of monies out that would say it’s mass media, and it ain’t anything like that.

“. . . I had a staff of music lovers in my previous job. Music lovers. A couple of them were married, they were in their thirties, and you know what they do? They get together with their friends in a restaurant, and they spend an evening, and that’s all they can afford to do; they are making $23,000 and $24,000 a year, and they cannot afford to go to these concerts.

“. . . There’s another side of the coin. Once the performer becomes recognizable, there is the most extraordinary avarice to get the fees up as fast as possible. And that, for me, is what has wrecked the business. An artist could go on the road and make a decent living at fees somewhere in the $5,000 or $6,000 range and that’s about all that anybody out there in the hinterlands can afford. Now, I think maybe that’s all I have to say.”

Of course, it wasn’t all he had to say. His last professional endeavor was to found, with his former Y colleague Jacqueline Taylor, a series of free public concerts with major artists that they called “Free for All at Town Hall.” They wrote about its genesis in the 2004 edition of Musical America Directory, and we can still look forward to these concerts each spring. Martin Riskin, who is now president and artistic director of the series, tells me that the upcoming concerts will be dedicated to Omus.

Looking Forward

My week’s scheduled concerts:

2/1 Paul Hall. FOCUS! Festival. Cage: Five Songs (1938); Six Melodies for Violin and Keyboard (1950); Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939); Etudes Boreales, Nos. 1 & 3 (1978); Sonnekus² (1985); Satie Cabaret Songs; Child of Tree (1975); The Perilous Night (1944).

2/7 Rodgers Theatre. Gershwin: Porgy and Bess. Audra McDonald (Bess), Norm Lewis (Porgy), David Alan Grier (Sportin’ Life).

1/8 Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Gluck: Armide. Juilliard Orchestra/Jane Glover. Emalie Savoy (Armide), Alexander Hajek (Hidraot), David Portillo (Renaud), Alexander Lewis (Artémidore), Luthando Qave (Ubalde), Noah Baetge (Le Chevalier Danois), Wallis Giunta (Phénice), Devon Guthrie (Sidonie), Evan Hughes (Aronte), Renée Tatum (La Haine), Soo Yeon Kim (La Naïade), Pureum Jo (2nd Coryphée), Deanna Breiwick (Une Bergère), Lilla Heinrich-Szász (Lucinde), and Raquel González (Mélisse).

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Cellphones and Their Ilk

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

by Sedgwick Clark  

Many years ago I was sitting next to the p.r. director of the Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall when a cellphone went off as Simon Rattle conducted. When the piece ended I asked him if that happened in Berlin. “Everywhere,” he said sadly.   

I left for vacation two days after the cellphone brouhaha at the New York Philharmonic last week, when the ringer in front-row center went off during the last page of Mahler’s Ninth and Alan Gilbert courageously stopped the orchestra until the thing was turned off. The explanation and the miscreant’s subsequent phone apology to Maestro Gilbert got loads of coverage, even on television. But as I passed through the airline’s frisker at Newark Airport I had no doubt what should be done: All concertgoers should be required to pass through metal detectors, and those who fail the test must check their cellphones, blackberries, iphones, et al. in the coat room before they are allowed to enter the concert hall.   

Unmuffled coughing (nearly always in a quiet moment) is annoying enough, but I’ve yet to encounter anyone with a good word to say about cellphone beepers in concerts. I recall the woman at a Philharmonic matinee over ten years ago who answered her cellphone to say loudly, “I can’t talk now—I’m in a concert.” Valery Gergiev ignored her, but I’ll bet Kurt Masur would have turned around and let her have it. (Which reminds me of the story of Sir Thomas Beecham conducting the final six widely spaced chords of Sibelius’s Fifth and several audience members applauding prematurely; he turned around and bellowed, “Savages,” before turning back to the orchestra and finishing the symphony without skipping a beat.)  

I wonder what Herbert von Karajan would have done?   

Gilbert’s Mahler

I heard the first of the series of Gilbert’s Mahler Ninths and found myself among the “some” mentioned by the Times‘s Tony Tommasini who might prefer a more emotional—nay, intense, searching, devastating—interpretation. I cannot go without mentioning Principal Cellist Carter Brey’s solo just before the last page of the work, which in a few seconds conveyed all the Mahlerian eloquence and heart-rending depth I found missing from the other 80 minutes. There are many extraordinary musicians in the Philharmonic, and Brey is among the uppermost.

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