Boston Symphony Orchestra double-bassist Todd Seeber has described the orchestra's relationship with its fired music director Andris Nelsons as a "once-in-a-lifetime artistic symbiosis" and called his dismissal "artistically ill-informed."

Writing in the Boston Globe, Seeber — the former chair of the players' negotiating committee — offered the fullest account yet from inside the orchestra of the crisis that has gripped the BSO since Nelsons' contract was suddenly terminated in March, without public explanation.

The termination landed in the very week the orchestra's musicians were required to begin contract negotiations, which take place every three years. In late August, 94 percent of BSO musicians ratified a new agreement covering wages, pension, working conditions and increased artistic input.

Seeber warned against reading that vote as an endorsement of the board's decision on Nelsons. "A trade agreement is always a compromise," he wrote. "It cannot be a referendum on reinstating or removing a music director, CEO, player, or leader."

"Most in the orchestra wish Nelsons could stay," he continued. "The once-in-a-lifetime artistic symbiosis we enjoy with Nelsons will be lost; the extraordinary partnership with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, recording contracts, a historic Mahler festival, all lost."

The partnership with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, which Nelsons jointly led, had produced a landmark Mahler cycle and a historic festival of the composer's symphonies. All of it, in Seeber's telling, now collapses with the Latvian conductor's departure.

Seeber said the musicians still have "no palpable explanation" for the removal, and concluded that "the board did so for non-artistic reasons." The board, he said, had made clear since March that reinstating Nelsons was non-negotiable, and "continued to cast blame for the current crisis and public outcry onto the musicians."

He accused the leadership of being "impervious to self-reflection or to any suggestion of misguided decision-making or wrongdoing." Nelsons, he wrote, "cannot stay, or be brought back, with the current leadership in place."

The new contract nonetheless contains significant artistic safeguards. Management refused to cede final artistic decision-making, which continues to rest solely with executives. But the agreement allows for regular and increased player input, and — crucially — ensures that any titled conductor, including a future music director, can only be hired if deemed qualified by a majority of the musicians on the search committee, with artistic factors taking primacy above all others.

Seeber framed the deal as a necessary innovation at a moment when American orchestras face "unprecedented challenges around programming and performing standards, the minimization of core classical repertoire, declining audiences, and commercialization."

He described the agreement as "a vanguard move by the BSO" and, more cautiously, as an experiment — "perhaps, more experimental than most."

"This agreement does not signal new trust in management," he concluded. "Rather, it challenges management to prove itself trustworthy. We will see."

The intervention keeps pressure on the BSO's board months after the March termination, and the musician-veto provision in the new contract will now shape — and likely complicate — the orchestra's search for Nelsons' successor.