Another Wall built

[Guest guest]

Trouble and cost of visas halts Hallé's US tour

 

David Ward

Thursday March 30, 2006

The Guardian

 

 

One of Britain's leading symphony orchestras has been

forced to scrap an American tour, partly because of

the " mind-blowing palaver " and cost of securing visas

for 100 players and staff.

 

The Manchester-based Hallé had been due to visit the

US next year for two concerts, including one at the

Lincoln centre in New York, the country's principal

classical music venue. But managers said yesterday

they had cancelled the tour when they realised that

the cost of arranging the visas, estimated at £45,000,

would render the trip uneconomic.

 

Other agents said rock musicians, also fed up with the

process and expense, were refusing to visit the US to

work. Katie Ray, of Traffic Control Group Ltd, which

secures visas and work permits mainly for rock bands,

said some artists were now choosing not to tour in the

US.

 

John Summers, the Hallé's chief executive, said each

orchestra member would have been required to go to

London after phoning to arrange an interview at the US

embassy. " We think this would have taken two days out

of [our] schedule. The US visa service ... will not

use consulates outside London. This palaver of getting

visas is mind-blowing. "

 

The cancellation of the tour is a bitter blow for Mark

Elder, who has raised the Hallé to new heights since

he became music director in 2000. " It seems a crying

shame that the chance for this wonderful British

orchestra to appear on the US east coast should be in

part blighted by a too fanatical approach at the

embassy. "

 

New visa procedures have been introduced to protect

the US against terrorists. Most visitors with

machine-readable passports can still use the visa

waiver scheme, but performers intending to work in the

US cannot do this. They have to arrange an appointment

at the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, via a

phone line charged at £1.30 a minute, and then appear

for an interview and fingerprinting. The fee is $100.

 

" It's not a level playing field, " said Russell Jones,

director of the Association of British Orchestras.

" Journalists and sports people do not have to go

through these hoops. " He said officials were following

orders from the US department of homeland security,

but it meant that " that wonderful cross-pollination of

orchestras coming from and going to the US is going to

decline if it's too much trouble " .

 

The Hallé's tour was arranged by the management agency

Konzertdirektion Hans Ulrich Schmid, of Hanover.

Cornelia Schmid, the company's president, said the WDR

Orchestra of Cologne had been caught in the visa trap

and had to send all its players to Frankfurt for a day

at a total cost of €30,000 (£21,000). The Vienna

Philharmonic, with a residency in New York, is also

unhappy at having to secure visas for its players for

each trip.

 

Ms Schmid said: " It is very bad publicity for the US. "

 

John Caulfield, the US embassy's consul general in the

UK, said statistics showed the new rules had not led

to fewer performers going to the US. Since the start

of 2004 all US visas had incorporated a print of the

right and left index fingers. " We cannot go [to

Manchester] because the equipment is linked into our

computers and [goes] back on high-speed lines to

Washington to check the biometric data against

databases. We are all paying a cost because of

terrorism. "

 

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006