The San Antonio Symphony musicians say this is a 'dark day in San Antonio's history,' News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Craig Sorgi, a violinist with the orchestra and the head of the musicians negotiating committee, says none of musicians expected the San Antonio Symphony Society to 'suspend' the remainder of the 2017-2018 season after the Tricentennial concerts at the Tobin Center tomorrow and Saturday.
"As of this coming Monday morning, the members of the orchestra, 72 musicians plus the remaining staff will be placed into a situation of great hardship and will find themselves unemployed," he said.
Sorgi says all of the musicians are talented professionals who could find positions on orchestras anywhere in the world. He expects many will soon leave San Antonio for other positions, and he expects Sebastian Lang-Lessing, the Symphony's superstar conductor, to join them.
The musicians blame Symphonic Music for San Antonio, a group that was made up of major donors which took control of the symphony in 2017, only to pull out of a management role over a dispute over allegedly unfunded pension liabilities.
Sorgi is not optimistic that the remainder of the current season, or even the next season, will happen, especially if the musicians start leaving the city. He says that would be a loss to to the community's economic development and quality of life.
"The economic generator, which brings companies like Toyota or AT&T to this city, when corporations are looking at moving, they immediately look at the quality of life."
People who were at the very first meeting between executives of Toyota and the City of San Antonio and then Gov. Rick Perry over Toyota's plan to open a truck plant in the U.S., say the first question Toyota executives asked about San Antonio wasn't about tax breaks or a skilled work force but was 'do you have a symphony?'
Sorgi says many of the musicians are work giving music lessons and as music teachers, and he says that has been a major part of the Symphony's mission, which will also be lost through the closing
."We play to between 9,000 and 12,000 of the city's forth and fifth grade children each year, at our young people's concerts," he said. "These are concerts we have been doing for decades."
Sorgi also said the taxpayers are the losers in the symphony debate. He points out that taxpayers paid nearly $150 million to build the Tobin Center on the promise that it would be the home of the Symphony, and would be the largest tenant of the center."If there is no symphony, why did taxpayers pay to build the Tobin Center."