Sign Me Up!

Help us restore live orchestral music for Northeast Indiana.  Please sign this letter to the Fort Wayne Philharmonic management and Board of Directors.  Click the button below to sign the form, and we’ll deliver it for you.

To the management and Board of Directors of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic:

We are contacting you in support of the musicians of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, who are invaluable members of our community. The musicians provide a cultural infrastructure that reaches far beyond the orchestra. They provide private music lessons for our children and teach at area universities. They perform for our families at sacred and private events including birthdays, weddings, and other milestones of our lives. Having made Fort Wayne their home, they are deeply involved in all aspects of community life. 

We are people who love the Philharmonic.  We are long-time subscribers, first-time concert-goers, downtown employees, small business owners, arts administrators, school teachers, doctors, lawyers, bartenders, truck drivers, and union members.

We are extremely concerned about the path contract negotiations have taken. Every musician proposal offering temporary COVID concessions has been met by your demands for permanent cuts to musicians and wages. You have proposed a model of employment that monopolizes the musicians’ time without providing adequate compensation long-term. By reducing their salaries to poverty wages, many would be forced to leave Fort Wayne and find employment elsewhere.

Yet, the Philharmonic is financially well positioned to weather and rebound from the challenges posed by the pandemic. In addition to the money saved by unpaid salaries and concert production expense during the furloughed year, the organization sits atop net assets valued at more than $26 million.

We stand with the musicians and are ready to assist and support them. We call on you to quickly negotiate a fair contract that doesn’t seek to make temporary measures permanent—one that respects the legacy and artistic vision of one of Fort Wayne’s oldest cultural treasures, built over decades of hard work.