The unexpected vote for a British exit (“Brexit”) from the European Union is certain to have consequences for musicians, just as it's causing what the normally unsensational Economist is calling “Anarchy in the UK.”
Granted that it will take time to implement the withdrawal from the EU and that there is no precedent so literally no one knows what will happen and when, there are already known problems in the future (besides unknown unknowns).
The Leave vote may imperil the current free movement of people between E.U. countries and Britain through new visa and immigration rules. Before the U.K. joined the Common Market in 1973, touring musicians were required to carry a "carnet" — a document listing their every piece of equipment, which would be rigorously checked at each border — and visas were required to enter most European territories.
Fear of at least a partial return to the bad old times is reflected in the thoughts of pianist Stephen Hough in ClassicFM:
I was shocked [by the result], then bewildered, then, later in the morning, conscious that playing classical music is to be unavoidably immersed in a European world, whatever the politicians might decide; and furthermore, a European world which is itself open beyond its own borders. Great art doesn't so much destroy barriers as make them irrelevant.
I don't think any of us know how [Brexit] will affect anything yet. Musicians are used to travelling freely to perform so there’s obviously a worry if this were to change. Artists have had to cancel engagements here and in the U.S. recently because visas were late arriving. Let’s hope that this will not become the case for British musicians working in Europe.
According to several sources, including Slipped Disc, musicians from 28 EU countries, who can now live and work in the UK without prior condition, will have to prove after Brexit that they are earning at least £35,000 a year ($46,273 as of today, at the rapidly fluctuating exchange rate).
An estimated three million E.U. citizens are currently living in the U.K., and they would be subject to the same changes in immigration regulations that are going into effect regardless of Brexit.
Although possibly exaggerated, estimates of fiscal loss from Brexit’s impact on the music industry reach into millions of dollars, considering just one aspect, a reduction in “music tourism,” which generates billions of dollars for the U.K. economy, including “a 39 percent rise in overseas tourists attending music events in the last four years,” according to Paul Reed, general manager of the Association of Independent Festivals, responding to the Brexit vote.
Will Brexit have significance for U.S. musicians and audiences? Probably only as the result of new patterns of movement and exchange between the U.K. and the European continent. If it’s more trouble (and expense) for orchestras to travel between those now-free ports, perhaps there will be more tours to the U.S. It’s uncertain, as is everything else in the post-Brexit vote world.
Even now, before any of the feared complications in the future, it’s not simple or easy for artists to travel: They have to deal with the Schengen Borders Code and differences between national regulations even within the E.U. and still-member U.K.