Philly Pops musicians and management reach tentative agreement for new contract
The deal suggests that the Pops, which had said it would fold, sees a possible path to survival.
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Musicians and management of the Philly Pops reached a tentative agreement Friday on a new labor deal, both sides said. The pact, if approved, averts a strike, which players raised as a possibility earlier this month when they voted to authorize a work stoppage.
A ratification vote on the new labor contract covering the group’s five dozen core instrumentalists has not yet been scheduled, said Ellen Trainer, president of Local 77 of the American Federation of Musicians. Both Pops management and players declined to provide details of the deal Friday.
The Pops announced in November that it would cease operations at the end of this season. But the new tentative agreement, back-dated to this past Sept. 1, runs through Aug. 31, 2024 — suggesting that the group is eyeing a potential path to survival.
Pops leaders declined to answer specific questions about the group’s future prospects.
“We are happy to celebrate this holiday season with a tentative agreement. We’ve worked very hard over the holiday to put together a reasonable contract,” said a statement from management released Friday. “Upon Philly Pops musician ratification we will look toward the future, moving forward together.”
Trainer said she did not know of any specific plans to save the Pops, which last month announced its impending demise. But she said she hoped that if a successor organization continues to present the same programming for the same audience, the terms of the new contract would be honored. At the Pops’ recent Christmas shows at the Kimmel Center, Pops music director David Charles Abell told audiences that the annual tradition would return in 2023 with the same musicians.
Citing sagging attendance, the Pops’ leadership said in November that the group would shut down at the end of the 2022-23 season after more than four decades, and that the remaining concerts would be presented under the auspices of the newly merged Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center Inc.