The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra is a group that's eager to please, whether by performing its popular — and free — summer Concerts on the Square, or adding a "family blue jeans concert" to its roster of otherwise-sophisticated performances in Capitol Theater.

Lately, however, it's been all about getting dirty in the trenches.

For more than three weeks, the organization has been mired in the first musicians' strike in recent Madison history. Between the players and the management stands the orchestra's most visible spokesman, music director Andrew Sewell, whose job demands that he not take a side but who has seen the first two concerts of his 2008-09 WCO season canceled due to the stalemate.

"There are always tensions in these processes," Andrew Taylor, director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration at the UW-Madison School of Business, said of contract negotiations in the arts world. "But the public usually doesn't see them. They work it out."

This battle, however, has gone blatantly and bitterly public. In a volley of press releases, management has blamed musicians for not promising to head back on stage later this month, even though they've won numerous concessions over eight months of talks; musicians accuse management of denying them rights that are standard among orchestras across the country.

"I'm hoping the audience will understand that the things we're asking for are not economic issues," said Naomi Bensdorf Frisch, one of the musician negotiators and the WCO's principal oboe player. As for the strike, "The orchestra is extremely united. We're all very much in favor of sticking this out for the long haul."

Across the Madison music community, the WCO strike is "part of our daily conversation, every day," said Stephanie Jutt, principal flute player with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, both of which are entirely separate organizations from the WCO. "It's terribly depressing to all musicians to see our colleagues involved in a do-or-die struggle like this."

After declaring the WCO's annual Halloween show canceled, administrators are taking things "a day at a time," WCO executive director Doug Gerhart said last week. "Our first thought always is about the audience we serve, and just certainly not wanting to leave them in the lurch again."

'Soloist quality'

The 49-year-old WCO generally performs 29 concerts a year, has an 11-person staff, and employs 36 part-time "core" players, who are members of the American Federation of Musicians. Since late 2005, the 1,000-seat Capitol Theater in Overture Center has been its primary performance home, although the group has its largest audience when it plays its six-week Concerts on the Square series each summer under open skies.

Chamber orchestras are much smaller than a symphony orchestra and have their own repertoire of music. Because each instrument is heard so distinctly, says the WCO Web site, "the challenge and opportunity of a chamber orchestra is to fill each seat with a musician of soloist quality." Of the group's select core musicians, a third travel more than 100 miles from Madison to play.

On Tuesday, however, many showed up outside Overture Center with picket signs instead of instruments.

The roots of the rancor are more than five years deep. In their last contract in 2002-03, musicians got a 155 percent pay increase, said Frisch, "but we had to give up many of our rights." Negotiations dragged on for well over a year.

"These five years have been very difficult working under this contract," said Frisch. "We've made it work and we've adjusted, but people's jobs have been threatened. Relations between musicians and management have been tense.

"Things are just not working well, and we're trying to get back to the industry standard that we had before," she said. "We even agreed to a pay cut in the first year (of the new contract) to get some of those things."

Management, who is working with a labor attorney from the firm Foley & Lardner, says it agreed to contribute to a national pension plan for the musicians, boosted mileage reimbursements, agreed to an auditions screening committee staffed by musicians, and more. Gerhart said Wednesday that management is eager to get back to the negotiating table this Friday or early next week.

One of the toughest roadblocks to an agreement has been attendance policy. In the past, the WCO asked musicians to be at 90 percent of all rehearsals and shows. But since the WCO job is part-time, many players also have other teaching and performing obligations, and scheduling conflicts can arise.

Other sticking points: rules regarding firing policies, and whether a set of national agreements should govern how the WCO compensates its musicians for electronic media, from CD releases to mp3s and more.

Tough talk

The musicians declared a strike Oct. 1, the day they were supposed to be rehearsing for the WCO's season-opening concert two days later. The Oct. 3 show was canceled. But on concert night, many of the musicians picketed the Overture Center and then performed Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 — without a conductor — for free at a nearby church.

The WCO later announced it was nixing its light-hearted family Halloween concert on Oct. 24 because it had no assurance from the musicians that they'd show up.

Principal bassoon player Todd Jelen, a spokesman and negotiator for the musicians, blasted the cancellation as an "early Halloween trick" by management. "It just seems they're going to deny us this work," he said.

Countered Gerhart: "The frustrating part is wanting and attempting to negotiate, feeling like you've done so in good faith, feeling truly that there can't be too many issues remaining, and still have tactics like these."

It probably has come to this, said the Bolz Center's Taylor, because contract negotiations "are about people's lives and careers — on both sides." Musicians need flexibility in order to make a living, and yet "It's a big cost to run a professional orchestra," he said.

But it could be dangerous to an entire organization if a strike goes on too long, particularly "during one of the worst financial crises in American history," Taylor said. People could ask, " 'Say, what are you fighting about?' "

With 600 subscribers, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra has found a niche on the Madison arts scene, Taylor said. All the same, "I would be worrying on both sides. If you can't come together, you can be replaced.

"Your donors, your board members, your volunteers — they're there because they feel a passion for the organization," he said. "It's important not to violate that trust."

WCO strike: What's next?

The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra canceled its annual Halloween concert this Friday, although contract negotiations are continuing. No announcement has been made regarding the group's Middleton Holiday Pops Concert scheduled for Nov. 29-30 and its next Masterworks concert set for Jan. 23.

More details about contract negotiations are online:

WCO management tells its side at www.wcoconcerts.org, while musicians tell theirs at http://wcomusicians.wordpress.com