Cloth roses put a thorn in side of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s leadership.
Andris Nelson conducted the Boston Symphony in April at Carnegie Hall, festooned with roses of protest.
Photo: Chris Lee
The board of the Boston Symphony Orchestra announced March 6, 2026, that music director Andris Nelson would be shown the door. Less than a year and a half earlier, the leadership had affirmed that his contract would renew automatically, but the trustees then counter-announced his dismissal, saying only that the conductor and the orchestra “were not aligned on future vision.”
…a non-explanation that caused cross-eyed anger among its musicians and longtime patrons, too.
Quinn MacKenzie and George Whiting, who would soon lead BSO Patrons Action Network and had given Nelson full-throated support, were stunned. Whiting declared that musicians “from 20 groups worldwide have spoken in support of the players and Andris. They are asking, ‘What are you guys doing?’”
Just a few days after the March announcement, musicians in the orchestra began arriving at concerts wearing red flowers – a striking and, we must say, beautiful accessory amid all the brass, bows, and black attire. This was protest at its quietest, permitting Nelson’s gifted conducting and their own music to say the rest.
BSO patrons declare their support for conductor Nelson through the Red Flower Campaign.
Photo: Patrons Action Network
MacKenzie and Whiting then created Stand With Andris and initiated a Red Flower Campaign.
When BSO traveled to New York for a Carnegie Hall concert, they stood outside offering symphony patrons red roses made of cloth. Emma Hoffman, writing for Parterre, reported the players came on stage with ”red blooming from their boutonnières or behind their ears, (and) turned to face the waiting audience.” They were greeted with applause “in the way a crowd greets someone who has undergone some horrendous ordeal.” Then Nelson, red flower on his jacket “emerged to the audience’s roar. The tone of the evening came into focus: This was symphony as solidarity.”
The rose protest continued to swell, and the orchestra’s management soon was fuming.
BSO officials told Whiting and MacKenzie in late April that they couldn’t hand out flowers at the the main entrance to the symphony hall in Boston; instead, they were sent to “a designated protest area on Huntington Avenue” some distance away.
Yet the effort to clamp down, paired with ongoing silence from the board and CEO, only energized the floral protest.
Tanglewood is the Boston Symphony’s summer residence, long cherished as a pastoral escape from city summer, but not this year. BSO Patrons Action Network has rented a storefront in Stockbridge with posters of Nelson in the window, and red roses keep making their way into the concert hall.
The Boston Globe obtained official symphony memos alerting employees to watch for “anyone on campus carrying multiple red flowers”. They haven’t forbidden the wearing of red flowers YET, but “the staffers have been instructed to preemptively tell those people that distributing materials isn’t allowed, advise them to stash the flowers out of sight, and then also alert public safety staff. If the person is subsequently caught handing out a flower, they are to be issued a formal warning and asked to leave if deemed necessary.”
The Globe interviewed Richard Ranti, who’d played bassoon with the orchestra for more than three decades. Carrying red flowers at the Koussevitzky Music Shed on Sunday, he was approached by a concert-goer who wanted a rose. “When he handed one over, a nearby staff usher quickly informed him of the rule against distributing materials.”
New Englanders and classical music buffs are famous for sangfroid but this encounter began boiling.
“Ranti admitted he reacted to the usher in anger…. “I said, ‘Lookit. I’m a retired musician. I’ve been here 37 years. Don’t do this.’ ” A whiff of sulphur has leaked into the fresh air of Tanglewood.
The BSO story adds an edge to the old notion of “flower power”. If by pinning on cloth roses, retired bassoonists and lovers of Dvořák can intimidate the Brahmins who oversee Boston’s great symphony, anything is possible.
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