On March 27, 2025, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Jonathan Carney sued violinist Lara St. John over her Facebook post about him.
The post was referring to Carney being named Concertmaster Laureate with the Baltimore Symphony upon his retirement at the end of the 2026/27 season. In her Facebook post, St. John commented, “It is appalling to me that this Carney concertmaster is now allowed to retire with heaps of laurels, while a lot of women have been harassed and abused over a period of decades by this guy.”
She also went on to say, “It’s well-known that he asked many women in the orchestra for sex. Katherine Needleman famously said no 20 years ago, and he has treated her very badly ever since.”
In the federal case Carney v. St. John, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Carney identified 13 specific statements in St. John’s post, alleging that they were false and defamatory and caused harm to his reputation.
Jonathan Carney confirmed to The Violin Channel on March 25 that the defamation case has now been settled. The “key requirement” was St. John’s “retraction of allegations about which she had no first-hand knowledge, as well as a cessation of her personal campaign to defame me and cause harm to my reputation in the industry.”
Lara St. John then posted the following statement of retraction on her Facebook last week, and has since contacted The Violin Channel to elaborate on the terms of the settlement.
“While I had thought that the dismissal of Mr. Carney’s lawsuit against me would have ended public discussion of the litigation by both of us, I have been made aware that Jonathan Carney chose to make a statement to The Violin Channel concerning the litigation,” St. John said today. “Some of the statements made by Mr. Carney to The Violin Channel are, in my opinion, inaccurate and require a brief response.”
St. John explains that her attorneys advised her that “Mr. Carney’s lawsuit was not, in their opinion, meritorious and would result eventually in a dismissal of the Complaint.
“My attorneys conducted the depositions of Mr. Carney and five witnesses, including Mr. Carney’s expert witnesses,” she said. “Following the depositions, Mr. Carney, represented by counsel, agreed to dismiss the lawsuit, with prejudice, and a Stipulation of Dismissal with Prejudice was filed with, and So Ordered by, the Court on March 24, 2026.”
“Mr. Carney’s statement to The Violin Channel inaccurately states that in addition to the negotiated retraction that I agreed to post, that there would be a “… cessation of her personal campaign to defame me and cause harm to my reputation in the industry.”
St. John tells us that the Settlement Agreement “contains no such language or requirement.
“In addition, I can state that there has never been a personal campaign to defame Mr. Carney or to damage his reputation,” St. John writes. “An individual creates their own reputation and they just need to own that fact.”
In addition, Jonathan Carney told The Violin Channel that it “became necessary to pursue legal recourse when other reasonable efforts failed.
St. John argues that this is inaccurate, “as neither I nor my manager received any communication from Mr. Carney or his counsel prior to the commencement of his now dismissed lawsuit. Indeed, I am not aware of any efforts, reasonable or otherwise, of Mr. Carney attempting to communicate with me regarding my posts.”
Lastly, regarding the monetary exchange, Carney would not disclose how much the legal proceedings cost. He asserted that from his standpoint, it’s “not possible to put a price on the value of a reputation.”
St. John contends that, “despite his commencement of a lawsuit asserting alleged damages, no monies were paid to settle the litigation or to secure Mr. Carney’s signature on the Stipulation of Dismissal with Prejudice.”
Katherine Needleman, the current Principal Oboist of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, who was subpoenaed to appear as a witness in the Carney v. St. John case, took to her substack and wrote of the situation. Many on social media have also written in support of St. John, including former Washington Post reporter Anne Midgette.
“This lawsuit makes me shake my head,” Midgette said on social media. “Do we all think better of Jonathan Carney now that he made Lara St John take her post down? Does this really improve his standing in the classical music world?”
St. John tells The Violin Channel that she is thankful for “all of you who have communicated your support for me.”
