Re: union - carnegie hall

["todd reynolds" <toddreyn@gmail.com>]

Dear Erdem,

Sadly, this is indeed the case, especially at the big halls in NYC.  Things can be mitigated by being 'inside' the organization to a certain extent, i.e., 'knowing somebody', but in general, it is absolutely true, and difficult. 

What to do about it?  Negotiate far in advance, and an argument can sometimes be made that the 'system' for the piece is one specially designed for the piece and MUST be brought in from the outside.  

At Carnegie, that probably still would not work.  I've seen this countless numbers of times as I've played there and BAM and Tully.  Some places are a little more relaxed than others, but when you run into a wall, it's a brick one.

All best, and sorry you had problems!

Todd

On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 9:04 AM, Erdem Helvacioglu <erdemhel@tnn.net> wrote:

hey,

 

i have not unsubscribed, i am back :)

 

i have experienced a very weird problem with the union at the carnegie hall last week. a piece of mine for "classical guitar and digital playback ( or tape )" was scheduled to played by the turkish guitar virtuoso cem duruoz. the piece includes live classical guitar and cd playback. this is a 10 min piece. all i need for a setup like this is 2 decent active speakers, 1 monitor and a cd player. the guys at carnegie hall told him that they would need to be paid 2000$ to use the system there. even if cem brought all his equipment to the hall, he would still have to pay this amount because the sound engineer guys belong to the union it seems. this is the weirdest thing i haver heard in along time. is this really true? they told me that a lot of the venues in usa that include mostly acoustic music ( classical most probably ) seem to have this attitude.

 

Looking fwd to your comments and experience about this issue.

 

Best regards.

 

Erdem Helvacioglu
www.erdemhelvacioglu.com
www.myspace.com/erdemhelvacioglu
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