The throngs pressing toward the door of the Civic Opera House on the damp opening night of “Stars of the Bolshoi” were greeted by a curious sight and sound: On the concrete island in the middle of Wacker Drive were 14 musicians in concert black. They were playing Elizabethan dances arranged for brass choir, and they had signs taped to their heavy black music stands that read “This is the only live music you’ll hear tonight.” Just past the heavy columns that mark the Opera House’s property line, a dozen polite, well-dressed confederates handed out fliers to the ticket holders: “With taped music, you won’t get what you’ve paid for.” Others held hand-lettered signs: “Tape nyet,” “Live dancers deserve live musicians,” “Bolshoi uses a D.J.”
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The American Federation of Musicians was picketing the ballet. The issue: jobs–and culture. Inside the Opera House, the dancers not only performed without proper costumes and proper sets–theirs had been inadvertently left in Moscow–but without proper music.
Behind the diligently blowing brasses stood Charles Guse, president of the Chicago Federation of Musicians Local 10-208. “I used to play these ballets for 30 years myself. I play the tuba.
“I don’t know if it will do any good for the future, but it does our souls good to get out here and picket. We’ll be out all four performances–I thought a brass group outside would be best, but on Saturday we’re going to have strolling violinists playing pieces from ballets.”
