The Eastern Music Festival will be dissolved as an organization after negotiations between faculty artists, the EMF board, and staff broke down in the last few weeks. But faculty artists and supporters say they’ve identified a way to revive the yearly five-week summer festival, which draws professional classical musicians and students from all over the country to Greensboro.
The festival’s board has decided to dissolve the 64-year-old music nonprofit, it announced via press release Monday morning.
“EMF will soon begin work on ceasing its operations and identifying one or more suitable, mission-aligned nonprofits to which EMF will transfer its remaining assets,” the board wrote.
Conversations with EMF’s board and staff members on Monday reflected a standstill during negotiations that led to the board’s decision to dissolve the organization.
At Loggerheads
As The Assembly reported in August, the nonprofit had been undergoing contract negotiations with its faculty members, who voted to unionize in 2023. Afterward, the union, EMF’s board, and staff had been working to reach a consensus and continue the festival. But in February of this year, the EMF board canceled the 2025 summer festival. That led the union to file an unfair labor practice charge against the organization and landed EMF on the American Federation of Musicians’ International Unfair List.
In late August, the EMF board and faculty artists resumed negotiations. But things hadn’t moved forward, members of both sides said.
“[F]aculty members failed to offer any compromise on their intractable bargaining positions, despite knowledge of dissolution as a next-step option and considerable efforts by federal mediators to bring the two sides together,” the board wrote in its Monday release.
“It seems like we were at loggerheads with even the smallest things,” Chris Williams, EMF’s executive director, told The Assembly. “We put together a good offer. When we said, ‘What is your counter?’ It would go off into these really unusual tangents. It was not very germane and not very productive.”
The offer, which EMF’s board made to faculty artists in February, included a base pay increase for artists and a housing stipend. But John Shaw, a musician with the Florida Orchestra and principal percussionist at EMF, said the increases would actually amount to a decrease because of new pay structures that don’t take into account levels of seniority or numbers of individual students taught.
Another sticking point: maintaining the current faculty size.
For months, faculty artists had been pushing to keep their current number of 61 members. That would help keep the mission of EMF—teaching students and hosting a professional orchestra—intact, Shaw said.
That’s not something the board would agree to, Shaw told the Assembly.
“Basically, they said, ‘Well, if you can’t get off of the idea that we have to leave the faculty size the same and you can’t give up the idea of faculty that would play every Saturday night, we’re going to dissolve the festival,’” Shaw said.
And that’s what was decided by the board, said EMF Board Chair Anne Starr Denny.
“In terms of programming and the students we recruit, we can’t make a commitment to a specific number [of faculty],” Denny said. “We need the flexibility to meet the demands of the students and the programs we have. We were unable to come to an agreement.”
It was a difficult decision, Williams said, but one he supports.
“This board took their responsibility with the utmost seriousness,” Williams said. “They considered all of the facts, and they made a really tough call; I support that call.”
It is important for the organization to maintain the number of faculty, many of whom have been teaching at EMF for decades, Shaw said.
“My question was always, ‘How does cutting faculty or cutting out the faculty orchestra further the educational mission of EMF?’” Shaw said. “Which they didn’t have an answer for.”
In a statement posted on Facebook, EMF faculty artists said they were “saddened” by the announcement of the dissolution of the festival and that they would continue to “do everything within [their] power to keep that wonderful tradition alive.”
That dream may come true sooner, rather than later, said some who have been working behind the scenes.
An Enduring Model?
While the faculty artists and EMF’s board and staff have been negotiating for the last two years, Barbara Morgenstern has been working in the background to find a different path forward for the organization.
Ex-wife of EMF’s late founder, Shelly Morgenstern, she has been a staunch supporter of the faculty artists in the two years since they formed the union. In that time, she and a core group of funders say they have raised about $1 million to maintain faculty numbers and preserve the festival’s model.
Reached by phone on Monday, Morgenstern said she and the other funders have formed a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit under the name “Eastern School of Music at Greensboro” to continue the model her ex-husband started in 1961.
While the name will likely be changed, Morgenstern said, the goal is to keep all of the faculty, give them raises and housing stipends, and keep the festival running. She is currently in talks with administrators at Guilford College to secure the campus for the 2026 festival, she said.
Gerry Schwartz, the musical director of EMF, has agreed to stay on, Morgenstern said, and faculty artists are excited about continuing the work under a new organization.
“They’re excited about doing what they’ve done so well for 62 years,” Morgenstern said. “I think we have a real future if we can get our financial ship in order and not have this happen again.”
Morgenstern is currently chair of the new board, along with five other members who helped raise the $1 million. If they can secure their contract with Guilford College, she said, they’ll work on hiring staff and entering into negotiations with the faculty artists.
Shelly Morgenstern, who died in 2007, would likely have mixed feelings, she said.
“I think he would be sad to see it got to this point,” she said. “But I think he would be proud of me. I think he would be happy that we’re seeking to bring it back in the same way he envisioned it 62 years ago.”
Morgenstern has reached out to the EMF board about acquiring the organization’s assets, she said, which include musical instruments, a music library, furniture, equipment, and some cash.
“As part of the dissolution process, we will identify one or more qualified 501(c)(3) organizations whose missions align closely with EMF’s,” said Anne Starr Denny, chair of the current EMF board. “Ensuring that our remaining assets continue to support the education of young musicians in meaningful and lasting ways.”
“We’re very excited for the future,” Morgenstern said.
Sayaka Matsuoka is a Greensboro-based reporter for The Assembly. She was formerly the managing editor for Triad City Beat.
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