Managing an Imbalance of Power

by Rick Voyles

Introduction

One technique I often get requests to train on is managing an imbalance of power. There are effective techniques for handling power imbalance, however before we go too far, let’s consider what is an imbalance of power?

Power Imbalance: So What!

My guess is you are reading this article because of the title. And about now you are hoping I did not use an attractive title to lure you into an article about some sad story about power abuse I suffered in graduate school or something. Graduate school is not always fair and just. Nobody said it would be. Life isn’t fair. A lot of people suffer. Suffering the misuse of power does not create a position of privilege. Get over it! You are right. And that is why this is not a power imbalance story about one of my grad school experiences.

But wait a minute. You are right. Life isn’t fair! Some people have more power than others and therefore the risk of being hurt by their power seems considerably high. In fact, I am willing to wager that many, no most, of you either have been or currently are in some relationship where the power is not equal and you too have a story to tell about the suffering this imbalance causes. If you do not have a personal painful power imbalance scar story, then I will bet you are a witness to power imbalance scarring.

Well, if power imbalance is such a natural state of affairs in so many areas of life, then why are we making such a big deal about it at the mediation table? Bluntly put: Why can’t the technique simple be: “Life isn’t fair. We all have to suffer an occasional power imbalance every now and again in life. So, get over it?”

I mean really, in some cases isn’t an imbalance of power necessary, preferable even? I want the boss to have the financial risk when the bottom falls out of the market. I want the university president to have more power than my grad school professor. I want the judge to have more power than the man I am suing. I certainly want the judge to have more power than me, because I want the judge to make him do what I want. I want more power than my 15-year-old daughter. So someone at the mediation table has more power. Big Deal! Why should the one with less power get special treatment? Why should this party be singled out? Why should a socialist philosophy be insinuated at the mediation table just because a few unrealistic bleeding heart mediators wish to escape from the real world? We do not live with a balance of power in everyday life–why the surprise it exists in our mediations as well?

Power Imbalance in Mediation: A Big Deal

The issue of power at the mediation table concerns Self-Determination and mediator’s Neutrality. In fact, there is not anything to get excited about encountering an imbalance of power at the mediation table, unless it affects a party’s ability to self-determine. A cornerstone of the mediation process is the protection of self-determination. If a party cannot self-determine their own future, then little difference exists between mediation and a judge or hearing officer deciding their fate for them. Empowering someone to determine for themselves the outcome of their conflict is part of the design of the mediation process and the skill set of talented mediators. Any challenge to a party’s power to self-determine should be a concern of the talented mediator, requiring some serious attention and skill application. If a mediator does not recognize and address this challenge then the mediator could unwittingly become an accomplice or collaborator in undermining a party’s power.

Imbalance in and of itself is not a problem. When an imbalance affects self-determination something needs to be done. There are many forms of imbalance. You could see informational imbalance; for example, when a spouse does not disclose a hidden asset in divorce mediation. Self-determination is in jeopardy because your choice of outcomes is not real. Or the imbalance could be emotional where one party is overpowering or taking advantage of a meeker or less confident participant. Or a party might have better self-control in difficult situations. The imbalance could be intellectual, verbal, or an imbalance of experience (for example: managing the business or family checkbook or finances). The imbalance could be simply between the numbers of parties at the table. For example, it is not unusual for a Special Education mediation case to have many people on the side representing the school system, and only one or two on the parent’s side of the table. These imbalances need not cause concern unless a party’s self-determination is at risk.

Do eight against one create an imbalance? Yes. Does eight to one risk self-determination? Maybe. Maybe not. One does his or her homework and prepares extensively for the mediation or trial. The other sloughs off any preparation. Does this create imbalance? Yes. Does preparing versus not preparing risk self-determination. Maybe. Maybe not. Does a PhD. against a high school drop out create an imbalance? This is a trick question, isn’t it? I would have to say, yes. However, I will reserve judgment on which way the imbalance goes. I know some PhDs who would not stand a chance against a high school… Sorry, slipping into the grad school stuff again. Moving on. Does a PhD against a high school drop out risk self-determination? Maybe. Maybe not. You get the point.

Therefore let’s change the question a bit, rather than train mediators to recognize what an imbalance of power looks like. Let’s learn to recognize when self-determination is at risk and consider possible actions. One of the reasons this shift is appealing is that it gets me away from having to suggest ways to rebalance power at a mediation table. I am not sure I know how to do that and I’m not sure it really needs to be done. I have skills for empowering self-determination. I’m pretty sure I cannot infuse power-less parties with more power. Let’s look at a few available techniques capable of addressing self-determination.

Communication Skills: Listening

One indication of an imbalance of power is verbal bullying. The first technique for addressing an imbalance of power is the talented mediator’s superior communication skills. One effective way to support self-determination is to offer the party the one thing they are not getting: a complete hearing. For example: for the sake of avoiding harmful gender stereotyping, we will name the “victim” Jim. When Jim is continually cut off, you can slow down the verbal tempo by interrupting and asking a question. Asking the bully a question can take damaging attention off Jim. Asking Jim a question can stall the bully and give Jim a chance to speak. While the bully may not listen, may even attempt to cut Jim off again, you can simply interrupt again saying, “Excuse me for a moment. I was curious about what Jim was saying.” Then turn back to Jim with, “Please continue.” (Add words where needed).

Two things to notice about this technique: First, it does not matter if the bully hears Jim. In fact it is not important that the bully hear Jim at all. If the goal is to create a balance of power between the bully and Jim, then my concern could be about the level of respect Jim is not getting from the bully. But that is not my concern. Rather, my concern is that Jim has power enough for self-determination. I can do that by listening to Jim, by making sure Jim is heard (if no where else, then with me), by facilitating a process where Jim has a chance to think through all of his options. Which leads us to the second thing to notice about this technique: by showing interest in Jim’s comments, I am communicating that Jim’s comments are valuable. I am placing value where the bully will not. It is important to me, as the mediator, to hear Jim. Therefore, what Jim is saying is important. Where the design of the bully is to undermine value, I can counter-suggest if you will, value. Breaking the bullying tempo and inviting Jim to talk (to me) can create enough power for Jim’s self-determination.

“Why are you spending so much time listening to what Jim says!” the Bully says. “You think Jim is more important than I am!” Ah, what about neutrality, or the perception of bias? The perception of lost neutrality should not keep me from doing my job. Is there a risk? Yes. But by not trying something, I risk collaboration with the bully. How about this: “I’m sorry if it looks like I am favoring Jim’s comments. I certainly do not mean to be giving that impression. I am equally interested in what you have to say on the matter and want to provide you with equal time. Was there something you wanted to add or can you tell me more about…” Managing the risk of an accusation of your imbalance (ironic, isn’t it), can be a matter of time management at the table. How much time are you spending with Jim? Are you having lengthy discussions and inquiries? Alternate your attention between the two. Turn back to the bully and ask a question or summarize the bully’s position. Pay attention to the flow and focus of the communication. Manage the tempo, manage your timing and your communication skills can empower self-determination.

Communication Skills: Question Asking

One way to manage timing is with question asking skills. Simply make sure you get a chance to hear Jim’s response to your questions. By asking general background questions in joint discussion both Jim and the bully get to respond. If the bully cuts Jim off with a tirade or patronizing discourse you can simply claim missing data from your information or fact gathering. “Excuse me. Looking at my notes I seem to be missing Jim’s comments on my question about leave policy. Jim, can you help me out and tell me how you understand the leave policy?” It appears you are filling in gaps. Filling out “forms,” or getting all the data, or fulfilling your mediator obligations requires Jim to speak and be heard (by you). Using these “excuses” to have Jim talk can take attention off any focus on Jim, keeping it innocent, maintaining balance, staying neutral.

Question asking in caucus can lead to reality testing. “What happens if you decide to ‘cave-in,’ as you put it, Jim? What benefit is there for you, in an effort to avoid conflict here today, to pick a solution you are unhappy with?” “What could happen here today if you could select a solution that really makes you happy?” Realty testing with good question asking skills can be an effective way to get both bully and Jim considering potential outcomes, as well as the benefit/loss ratio (See the Benefit Matrix in “Discovering Benefits )to them for each potential solution. Outside Resources

Imbalance of power can also manifest itself via information. One party may have more information or experience than the other. Say, for example, one person in a marriage manages all of the finances for the home. If they are in your divorce mediation, then an ability to make financial decisions may be out of balance. A way to balance self-determining power could be appealing to the use of outside resources. Giving “homework” to the couple can be a good way to get information on the table. The “homework assignment” may require the party weak in financial experience to get help with the assignment in order to have it done for their next session. In reviewing the assignment, “Do you understand what you have to have ready for our next session? Do you have the resources and the help you will need to get this done? Is there anyone you can turn to assist you with this work?” There may be a pastor or minister who can help, a family member or a friend. Comparing results next session can bring to light areas for discussion, further explanation, or maybe further homework.

Another way to get information on the table is for the mediator to be as ignorant or inexperienced as the parties need. Asking for further clarification on a particular issue when you know one party is not getting the explanation or is overlooking a point can bring self-determining information to light. “Let me see if I understand family leave again.” You say that if… Is that right?” “So, does that mean if I…” Or, you can fill information gaps with experts not at the table: “Is there someone you can call to give you the information you need?” “Would the Personnel Director or HR Manager be someone you could turn to fill in the gaps we seem to have here today?” These types of inquiry can aid the flow of information. Especially when the information impacts a party’s ability of make an informed decision in his or her best interest. Information imbalance is similar to bullying. A special application of the type of questions you ask, i.e. appeals to an outside resource, and the way you facilitate the information flow and focus at the table can address information imbalance.

This requires some decision-making and judgment calls by you, the mediator. Remember, the issue is not equal power, but self-determining power. Parties have a right to be stupid and make poor choices (at least choices we might feel are stupid and poor). It is not our job to empower parties to make the “right” or “best” choice, whatever that might be, but to protect self-determination. That is why mediation is a skill set beyond just empathetic listening or therapeutic exploration. Empowering people to make informed decisions in their own best interest is the cornerstone of self-determination and the lifeblood of a master mediator.

Agenda Setting

Another technique for managing communication and information is agenda setting. First opportunity to create an agenda is during joint discussion using chart paper. It is easy to list items that come up during opening statements and joint discussion. While summarizing their opening statements list their topics. This creates focus and structure to their communication. By identifying topics, you can turn to each party for information or perspective on that topic. “Now that we have a list of topics important to both of you, let’s talk about each of them in detail. Jim, tell me what is important to you about….”

A second agenda setting opportunity exists in caucus. Meeting privately with each party and developing an agenda for topics they each want to discuss when everyone gets back together assures Jim’s agenda items equal exposure when we reconvene together. “Jim, one of the things you said you wanted to talk about was… Can you say more about this?” Be careful not to speak for parties. The agenda assures topics are not forgotten. It is not your role to talk about the topic yourself. Get parties talking for themselves about what is important to them. Agenda setting can structure their communication in a way that is hard to perceive as bias attention toward Jim.

Roleplay Hypotheticals

Roleplying a hypothetical conversation during caucus can greatly increase the possibilities for self-determination. For example: “Jim, I have four items here you wish to discuss when we get back together with bully. Are you willing to discuss these items with bully?” “Yes? Good.” “Let’s talk about how that conversation might go. If you say XYZ, how do you think bully will respond? Let’s roleplay possible responses together: how would you respond if bully says…” Roleplaying hypotheticals can be a way to empower Jim’s ability to self-determine. Jim gets the chance to think through possible scenarios and how he might manage them. “If bully says, this; if bully says, that; if bully says, Yes; if bully says, No….” Assume it is impossible for you to think of every possible combination of potential responses. The exercise is enough to equip Jim with issues important to him, prioritizing them with him in such a way that he can apply his knowledge to whatever bully says.

Roleplaying hypotheticals can also be a useful technique with the bully. “I don’t know what Jim will say, but how do you think Jim might respond when you say XYZ? Let’s talk about how the conversation might go roleplaying possible responses together.” If bully’s response suggests an intimating tone, act it out. “If Jim’s agreement is the result of him feeling some kind of intimidation, how do you think this might influence Jim’s future behavior in the workplace? Would there be any benefit to you if Jim’s decision or agreement was not the result of intimidation?” And/or, “What benefit to you is there for Jim’s decision or agreement to be the result of some feeling of intimidation?” Roleplaying allows the consideration of “pretend” responses. Bully may not consider the possibility that his or her communication may be causing intimidation.

Remember, intimidation, in itself is not your primary concern. It may be sad that Jim feels intimidated in his workplace or his relationships. Jim may simply be weak, feeling intimidation where there is none, unable to stand up for himself. It is not mediation’s role to teach Jim assertiveness. His therapist can help him with that. Your role is to address Jim’s ability to self-determine. And guess what, intimidated people can self-determine.

Need Exploration

The most powerful technique addressing an imbalance of power is need exploration. Working with Jim, identifying his self-interest(s) can empower negotiation. Helping Jim name his need(s), helping him structure a way to discuss his need(s), exploring possible options for meeting his need(s) can empower Jim. Identifying need can be the best antidote for power imbalance due to information, emotion, verbal ability, etc. Pretend for a moment that you do have the ability to balance power to the level of equality. Both bully and Jim have equal information, equal respect, equal power, equal verbal ability, and equal experience. Assume, too, for a moment, we ignore any process to identify Jim’s need(s). What good is the balance? If Jim (or the bully, for that matter) is going to self-determine the outcome of this conflict, I would rather he do it around his need(s). All the power balance in the world will not help Jim’s determination process more than his ability to speak to and negotiate around his need(s).

All the techniques above will work to address an imbalance of power at the mediation table. However, the two I rely upon most are my communication skills, facilitating the information flow and focus enough to hear Jim and my need exploration skills, uncovering Jim’s self-interest. To the degree self-interest drives any of us, Jim is most likely to standup for his self-interest(s), especially if a process is available to identify them and to discuss them.

The bottom line is this. Knowing his need(s), Jim now has the choice to either negotiate a resolution addressing them, because they are important to him, or “cave-in” to a resolution knowing he is sacrificing his need(s) in the “cave-in.” By choosing, Jim gets to practice self-determination. The mediation process, then, does what it is designed to do. I employ my skills to ensure mediation gets a chance to do what it is designed to do. No more, no less.

Terminating the Mediation

If a power imbalance is such that you determine that self-determination by one of the parties is unobtainable, then I recommend terminating the mediation. Not getting an agreement is better than getting a bad agreement. Understand what is at stake here. On the one hand: terminating the mediation, if self-determination is not possible, you end the chance for bully to determine Jim’s future by offering the opportunity for a judge or hearing officer to decide Jim’s future.

On the other hand: by terminating the mediation, if self-determination is not possible, you end the chance for bully to determine Jim’s future and you becoming a collaborating perpetrator or a by-stander.

Conclusion

Since the question is not how much power does a party have, but rather does he or she have enough power for self-determination, an imbalance of power at the mediation table does not require a rebalancing act. Balance never has to be about creating equality at the table. It never has to be about taking someone else’s power away from them and giving it to another.

There may be circumstances where power imbalance is inevitable, even preferable. Even so, empowering a self-determination process could be of immense value in many relationships, organizations, and teams. Learning and practicing these highly transferable skills promotes response-ability and protects self-determination in the mediation process.

Latin Excitement in Three Boroughs

By JON PARELES/NY Times

Published: July 5, 2013

Music isn’t waiting for immigration reform; ideas cross borders. The annual Latin Alternative Music Conference returns this week, eclectic as ever and stretching to the Bronx, where it starts on Tuesday with a free show at 7 p.m. at Crotona Park (Claremont Parkway and Crotona Avenue) by the Brooklyn rapper Joell Ortiz and two Chilean disc jockeys, DJ Raff and Latin Bitman. Free concerts at Central Park SummerStage, midpark at 70th Street, include the rappers Fat Joe (from the Bronx), Cuarto Poder (from Venezuela) and Los Rakas (from Panama via Oakland, Calif.) on Wednesday at 6 p.m.; the Mexican trad-rocker Lila Downs on Thursday at 6 p.m.; and the Mexican pop-folk songwriters Julieta Venegas and Carla Morrison on Saturday at 3 p.m.

The Mexican electronica experts Bostich and Fussible, from Nortec Collective, headline Celebrate Brooklyn! at the Prospect Park Bandshell, Ninth Street and Prospect Park West, on Friday at 6 p.m., free, and the long-running Latin-tinged funk band War performs free at Crotona Park on Friday at 7 p.m. The conference also has smaller, well-populated showcases — where next year’s headliners may well be appearing — at Manhattan clubs. (Schedule: latinalternative.com/events.htm.)

JEFFREY BROWN: And now: the tough labor market for younger workers.

A new report finds underemployment among recent college graduates — that is, young adults working in a job that does not require a degree — has jumped to 45 percent.

The terrain is especially rough in the arts these days, as NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman learned, part of his reporting on “Making Sen$e of Financial News.”

PAUL SOLMAN: Gustav Mahler’s “Fourth Symphony,” conducted by James Gaffigan, played by the orchestra of perhaps the world’s foremost college of the performing arts, Juilliard, which costs $55,000 dollars a year to attend.

Though many are still undergrads, these kids make world-class music. No surprise, since they’re immensely talented and most of them have been practicing practically all day, every day, since they were tots and were admitted to one of the world’s most selective schools. Some Juilliard departments have less than a one percent acceptance rate.

So, what are the job prospects of some the world’s most gifted and motivated young college grads?

DIANE WITTRY, Conductor, Allentown Symphony: For any orchestral opening in the United States, you might have, for one violin opening, 300 people applying that are all completely qualified to do that job.

PAUL SOLMAN: That includes the Allentown, Penn., orchestra, which Diane Wittry conducts.

DIANE WITTRY: They play great. They have fabulous technique, great sound, great intonation.

PAUL SOLMAN: So then the obvious question: How do you decide whom to hire?

DIANE WITTRY: It’s almost like the Olympics. My harp player, I was just talking to her during rehearsal, and she had recently taken an audition. They give you a piece that’s really hard, and if you do really well on that one, you get to play another piece, and then maybe you do really well on that one, you get to play another piece.

And she was on the sixth excerpt, and then she messed up and missed a note. And then it’s like, thank you very much.

PAUL SOLMAN: Come on, one note?

DIANE WITTRY: Yes, you make a mistake and you’re out. And that’s how competitive it is in the audition process.

PAUL SOLMAN: And if you think it’s tough for instrumentalists, what about dancers?

Each dance class at Juilliard starts small, 24 students or so, and gets even smaller, through attrition. There are job opportunities for male dancers, less competition for each slot. The women, however, face almost impossible odds.

Gallim Dance Company, a small and upcoming modern dance troupe based in Brooklyn, recently advertised an opening.

MEREDITH MAX HODGES, Executive Director, Gallim Dance: And we had 700 dancers audition for the slot.

PAUL SOLMAN: Seven hundred.

MEREDITH MAX HODGES: Seven Hundred.

PAUL SOLMAN: Meredith Max Hodges is Gallim’s executive director.

MEREDITH MAX HODGES: Many of these dancers were graduates of conservatories, full-time dance programs. These were serious candidates.

PAUL SOLMAN: But no matter how serious, how talented, in today’s job market for the arts, there is no guarantee, or even much likelihood, of success.

Who’s to blame? A familiar culprit has had a hand: the great recession. According to one survey, 75 percent of New York’s nonprofit performing arts groups, those most likely to employ the classically trained, slashed budgets in 2009 and few, if any, are back to pre-crash levels.

A second villain of the piece is technology. When this Mahler work premiered in 1901, there was one way to hear it, in person, meaning dozens of people had to be paid to perform it over and over again. That same year, however, the Victor Talking Machine Company was established, allowing one recorded performance, or a few, to replace many hundreds of live ones.

A century later, searching online for video of Mahler’s “Fourth Symphony” yields 25 million hits. So why leave home, pay real money to sit uncomfortably, so you can hear and see the same thing?

GREG SANDOW, Juilliard: We are in the business of selling buggy whips in the age of the automobile.

PAUL SOLMAN: Greg Sandow teaches a Juilliard course on the grim future of an art form that he says simply hasn’t kept up with the times.

GREG SANDOW: The audience has been aging for around 50 years, so this is not sustainable. The people who are listening to classical music are getting older and are not being replaced by an equivalent number of younger people.

PAUL SOLMAN: One hope is that an aging population will continue to patronize work like this, and the musicians who perform it, for a while longer, though, for some older people, even works like this Bela Bartok violin concerto can be a challenge, and it was written 75 years ago.

But a 2009 National Endowment for the Arts study summed up the larger trend. Between 1982 and 2008, attendance at performing arts such as classical music, opera, ballet, has seen double-digit rates of decline, in short, fewer and fewer jobs for highly skilled classical performing artists, which means, by the cold law of supply and demand, stagnant or falling wages, except for the brand names who can still draw a crowd.

GREG SANDOW: It’s not like, well, you hoped you were going to be a world-beating entrepreneur, but you end with a solid mid-level job in a corporation. In the arts, it doesn’t really work out that way. You have 20-odd orchestras in what the League of American orchestras calls group one, and the minimum salary is quite respectable.

But then, beneath that, you have orchestras playing four, five, six concerts a year, and the musicians who play in those orchestras are racking up untold miles on their cars, going from gig to gig.

DIANE WITTRY: And a player in Allentown might make $6,000 to $7,000 dollars a year.

PAUL SOLMAN: Six or seven thousand dollars a year? What else do they do?

DIANE WITTRY: What they do is they play in Reading, in Harrisburg, and they play in the Philadelphia Opera, and they play in Delaware Symphony. And then many of them also teach privately and have teaching studios.

PAUL SOLMAN: So we’re creating more and more musicians who, in order to earn a living, have to teach, creating more and more really great students, who then have to do the same thing. It’s like a Ponzi scheme now.

DIANE WITTRY: Because you’re thinking of it like an economist. But we, as musicians, we don’t go into music for the money. We go into music because it’s part of our soul. It’s part of who we are. It’s what we have to do.

We want to share music with the world, and we would do it whether we got paid or not.

PAUL SOLMAN: Now, of course — and Sandow and Wittry agree — it was in a sense ever thus. “La Boheme,” act one, scene one, Rodolfo burns the pages of his new play to keep himself and roommate Marcello from freezing.

GREG SANDOW: But now the problem is worse, because there are fewer of the jobs that used to exist. And many of the ones that still exist, like those in orchestras, they feel precarious and musicians are taking pay cuts.

PAUL SOLMAN: Moreover, though Puccini’s 19th century Bohemians were behind on the rent, even they weren’t in the hole for tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, not unusual for today’s fine arts grads, like 28-year old dancer Caroline Fermin, who says the market salary of $28,000 dollars that she earns from her highly coveted full-time job at Gallim Dance barely allows her to keep up with the payments on the $60,000 dollars she borrowed to attend Juilliard.

Indeed, many artists are calling it quits here in the U.S. and heading abroad.

CAROLINE FERMIN, Gallim Dance: I have a lot of friends that move somewhere to Europe or likewise to have a job that’s supported by the government, that gives more money to the dancers.

PAUL SOLMAN: What percentage of the dancers you know or friendly with are now primarily abroad?

CAROLINE FERMIN: Maybe 50 percent.

EMILY TERNDRUP, Gallim Dance: Fifty sounds right.

PAUL SOLMAN: Twenty-four-year-old Emily Terndrup, graduated from the University of Utah, dances in an off-off-Broadway show to help make ends meet.

EMILY TERNDRUP: It seems like the work is getting divorced from the pay a lot here in America, where, if you like to do this, you should do this for free, where, in Europe, I still feel like it’s, if we’re asking you to come and do this, we will pay you for the time we are taking. It’s disappearing in America.

PAUL SOLMAN: A common lament, though, of course, not just in the arts. But why do performing artists here still stick it out?

WOMAN: If you’re doing something you love, you figure out how to keep it alive. If it’s you and if it’s your truth, you just keep on going.

PAUL SOLMAN: But chances are also that you won’t necessarily make enough to live on.

FITZHUGH GARY, Student, Juilliard: All the more reason to create your job, your own job. Create your own project. Go out there and be your own boss, and figure out something that hasn’t been done before, and chances are you will love it.

PAUL SOLMAN: But how does a performing artist who practices all day every day learn how to practice entrepreneurship as well? That is a story for another day, a story we intend to tell soon

BARRY KOLMAN: “But we, as musicians, we don’t go into music for the money.” So says Ms Wittry. I will remember that when it’s time to pay for my kids’ education, or when my car’s transmission explodes, or at the checkout at my neighborhood Wal-Mart. Yes, we musicians love our music and yes,we are born with this gift and this mission to make the world a more beautiful place, but so many have their heads in the clouds and have no idea what your world will be like when you’re 50 (music retirement age) and still a member of “the 300 Club” of auditionees. Love your art but have a back up plan.

So the Symphony spent two years finding their golden boy international conductor from Montreal. They thought they snagged a super star who would spend time in Columbus; live there and be a vital part of the Columbus community not just as Maestro but as Citizen.

Four years later, their Maestro resigns citing that he wants to spend more time in Montreal with his new family. One certainly cannot fault the Maestro for that decision. But when the Search Committee elected him to be their next music director, did they really think that he would be a visible fixture and a local ambassador for the Symphony? What are these Search Committees thinking? Are there no talented, experienced, excellent American conductors to choose from? Are all of us more experienced conductors just not “cute” enough?

“Oy, so we got to go through yet another two year search? Nah, let’s just pick out a bunch of conductors who we already know and hope we can find a suitable one who may, you know…stick around for awhile. We don’t need no stinkin’ suitable applicants!”

The news of their Maestro’s departure hit the newspapers on June 18, 2013, stating that a 10-12 person Search Committee will be formed. Two weeks later, their new season was posted online with an array of guest conductors, some American, one from Montreal (really?). The fastest search in modern times! At the speed of a mouse click!

With the problems the Columbus Symphony have endured-firings, strikes, salary cuts, deficits- I sincerely hope that this “expedited” search works. The “Search Committee” owes it to the musicians and the generous people who are the patrons of this Orchestra to choose a conductor who will really invest his time and be a true citizen of Columbus, not just one who flies in and splits.

Their departing Maestro, as talented as he may be, has a right to make a very personal decision regarding his career and private life. But there are many others, perhaps equally as talented, who understand that a music director’s work is not over when the applause dies down. It just begins.

Pssst…Omaha…you might want to get your search committee together…I’m just saying.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/life_and_entertainment/2013/06/18/zeitouni-done-when-contract-expires.html

Rafael Schachter, Jew Who Led Verdi’s Requiem Mass in Terezin Concentration Camp, Honored Decades Later In Prague

By DENIS D. GRAY 06/26/13 12:55 PM ET EDT

PRAGUE — In a concentration camp designed by the Nazis to eradicate Jewish cultural life, among 120,000 of its inmates who would ultimately be murdered, a rising young musician named Rafael Schachter managed one of the miracles of the Holocaust.

Assembling hundreds of sick and hungry singers, he led them in 16 performances learned by rote from a single smuggled score of one of the most monumental and moving works of religious music – Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem Mass.

“These crazy Jews are singing their own requiem,” Adolf Eichmann, a principal architect of the genocide, was heard to remark after attending one of the performances at the unique and surreal camp of Terezin, in what was then German-occupied Czechoslovakia.

But for Schachter and his fellow prisoners, this Mass for the dead became not an act of meek submission to their fate, but rather one of defiance of their captors, as well as a therapy against the enveloping terror.

For Schachter would tell the singers: “Whatever we do here is just a rehearsal for when we will play Verdi in a grand concert hall in Prague in freedom.”

Seven decades later, in the capital of what is now the Czech Republic, his promise was finally fulfilled – the Roman Catholic Mass played in memory of the remarkable Jewish man and his fellow musicians who perished, among them brilliant composers, artists and intellectuals from across Europe.

“Rafael was not able to do it, so tonight we will play the requiem on his behalf,” said Murry Sidlin, an American conductor and educator who explains that his life’s mission is to illuminate the legacy of Terezin. He spoke before the event which took place this month, staged in St. Vitus, the magnificent 14th century cathedral which towers above the city from its hilltop location within the compound of Prague castle.

Filling the seats and pews beneath its soaring Gothic vaults, mingling among the tombs of Bohemian kings and Holy Roman Emperors, were Prague citizens, young and old, Catholic clergymen and members of a Czech-Jewish community which numbered more than 350,000 before World War II and is now reduced to fewer than 10,000 in the Czech Republic.

Also gathered together were several relatives of the dead. Terezin survivors present included Felix Kolmer, who last saw Schachter at Auschwitz as the two were separated on arrival into two lines by Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” an SS officer and doctor who conducted horrific medical experiments on inmates.

Schachter was herded into the line of those condemned to immediate death, and perished in 1945 at the age of 39, one month before the liberation of his country. The 91-year-old Kolmer, who still teaches physics and works on behalf of camp survivors, escaped death at Terezin and two other camps. But some 50 members of his extended family did not.

“What Rafi – that was his nickname – did, strengthened us,” Kolmer said. “The cultural life to which he belonged gave us the power to better resist our own fates, not just in Terezin but later in Auschwitz so we didn’t go to the gas chambers like sheep to the slaughter.”

Kolmer and Schachter were among the first of some 140,000 sent to Terezin – Theresienstadt in German. Described in Nazi propaganda as a “spa town” built by Hitler for the Jews, in reality it served largely as a collection camp for deportations to the killing centers of Eastern Europe. The inmates included some of the finest talents and minds of European Jewry, uprooted not only from Czechoslovakia but Germany, Holland, Austria, Hungary and elsewhere.

The Nazis initially kept it secret, but gradually began to tolerate an incredible flowering of intellectual and artistic life. Enough instruments had been smuggled in to form the Terezin Orchestra and a jazz group called the Ghetto Swingers. Cabarets, an opera and operettas, complete with printed handbills, were staged. Inmates gave more than 2,400 lectures on subjects ranging from physics to the cinema.

Conditions were nonetheless appalling. Survivors of Schachter’s chorus recall emerging from a dark, airless cellar where they rehearsed after hours of grueling forced labor to step over the skeletal bodies of inmates who had in the meantime succumbed to starvation and disease. Their own chorus of some 150 had to be replenished twice as members were deported to the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

A brilliant conductor and pianist, the normally mild-mannered Schachter was described as “like a crazed man on a mission,” determined to realize the Requiem despite the hardships and even strong opposition from some rabbis and elders who wondered why Jews should be performing a Christian Mass and worried that their captors might see it as an apology for their Jewishness and react with brutality.

Sidlin says it’s clear that Schachter’s determination stemmed from knowing that as his chorus members fought off starvation and illness, often not knowing the fates of their children and loved ones, the only therapy was total immersion in music – and Verdi’s carried a special message.

“We became that music,” a chorus survivor, Marianka May, said, explaining how the fear of tomorrow was transformed into hours of pure joy. She was one of several survivors of the Terezin chorus who appeared on large video screens installed in the cathedral for the concert.

“The Nazi occupation of Europe was the most profound statement of insanity ever made by mankind. And here these people were the firsthand victims of the insanity,” Sidlin said. “What they found in the arts, the lectures, the scholarly pursuits was grounding, they found something that was sane, something that was still beautiful and they were linking themselves to that and not the other thing.”

Eventually the Nazis even encouraged these activities, paving the way to what Sidlin calls a “sadistic lie.” Under pressure from Denmark after the deportation of Danish Jews to Terezin, Germany allowed a visit by the International Red Cross. Before its June 1944 arrival, gardens were planted, the inmates’ barracks renovated and shops stocked with goods. The old and sick, some 8,000, were sent to their deaths in Auschwitz. The Red Cross delegation spent six hours in the camp, which included tea with German officers, and gave Terezin a clean bill of health.

The visit also marked the last performance of the Requiem. Four months later, Schachter and most of the chorus were deported to Auschwitz, almost all murdered on arrival. A generation of young composers was wiped out at the same time: Pavel Haas, Gideon Klein, Hans Krasa and Viktor Ullmann, who composed three piano sonatas at Terezin. Combining the Central European tradition with Czech idioms and the latest directions in contemporary music, experts like Sidlin are certain they would have become the successors to Dvorak, Smetana, Janacek and other Czech greats.

Sidlin came upon this music by pure chance, browsing through a book on the subject in a Minnesota bookstore and coming to a brief mention of the 16 Requiem performances by a 150-strong chorus. “I thought to myself, `This is impossible, knowing what it takes to produce the Requiem under optimum conditions. If there is any truth to this it is miraculous,'” he recalled.

Sidlin, 73, whose paternal grandmother and her family where killed in a Latvian ghetto, contacted Holocaust experts but found little until he tracked down survivors, and the story began to unfold. Then, he said, one morning at 4.a.m., he bolted out of bed with a thought and combed the text of Verdi’s masterpiece:

“Who shall I ask to intercede for me, when even the just ones are unsafe…Give me a place among the sheep and separate me from the goats…Nothing shall remain unavenged…That day of calamity and misery, a great and bitter day.”

“I could see that almost every line of the Mass could have a different meaning as a prisoner. `Deliver me O Lord’ for them meant liberation. Nothing remaining unavenged was certainty of punishment for their captors,” he said. When Sidlin checked with the survivors they confirmed his insight into why they were so drawn to the work.

“Schachter told his chorus: `We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say.’ This was their way of fighting back, their form of resistance, defiance,” Sidlin said.

So in 2008, he started the Defiant Requiem Foundation, which includes the Terezin-based Rafael Schachter Institute for Arts and Humanities, attracting participants from around the world to perform concerts and study not the Holocaust as such but the application of Terezin’s lessons to human rights today.

Sidlin, currently a professor of music at Catholic University in Washington D.C., has also led performances of the Requiem – actually a concert drama with the operatic composer’s work at its core – in the U.S., Hungary, Israel and Terezin. It will be played next year in Berlin. This month, he was awarded the Medal of Valor by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a prominent Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles.

In the Czech capital, as the evening light filtered through the multicolored stained-glass windows, the Prague Symphony Orchestra musicians, 150 singers and conductor Sidlin, all dressed in black, began what is at any time an emotional wringer, Verdi’s music surging between chilling, thunderous depictions of the Day of Judgment and tender pleas for salvation, between unbounded joy and heartbreak.

Here, actors embedded in the orchestra rose at moments to speak the words of Schachter and others, remembered how they took their battle to the high moral ground, refusing to let their captors dehumanize them, rising from their own depths to the spiritual heights of Verdi’s music. A piano briefly replaced passages of the orchestral score, a haunting echo of Schachter playing the instrument to accompany his singers.

The silent, rapt audience, some in tears, watched segments of a Nazi propaganda film about Terezin showing children singing, eating thickly buttered bread and swaying on hobby horses as the mezzo-soprano, soprano and chorus intoned, “O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world, grant them eternal rest.” Everyone, including 3-year-old children, who appeared in the film was executed immediately after it was made.

There was no applause when the performance ended, the musicians silently leaving one by one but for a lone violinist who played fragments of a mournful Jewish melody. On the screens, families were being loaded onto trains. The doors were slammed shut and locked, a little girl looked out of a window, and the carriages rolled toward the concentration camps.