Posted by LV on July 04, 2003 at 07:58:53:
Thought this was interesting.......
Orchestral Survival: It's Not Simply the Economy, Stupid
By JAMES R. OESTREICH
SAN FRANCISCO
They were successive entries in Andante.com's news summary one recent Thursday: "San Antonio Symphony Declaring Bankruptcy," "Oregon Symphony Musicians Take Pay Cut." Scrolling back to Wednesday brought "Bailout of Florida Philharmonic Making Progress." (The orchestra has since declared bankruptcy.) On back to Tuesday: "Louisville Orchestra to File for Bankruptcy." (The orchestra has since saved the situation.)
And on through the previous weeks and months, with a pay freeze at the Milwaukee Symphony, no end of problems at the Pittsburgh Symphony and orchestral woes in Charleston, S.C., Savannah, Ga., and Columbus, Ohio. Even the mighty Chicago Symphony has faltered financially of late.
It might have seemed that the agenda for the annual conference of the trade organization the American Symphony Orchestra League, ending here last weekend, was ready-made. "There's nothing like a bankruptcy to focus the mind," Michael Morgan, the music director of the nearby Oakland East Bay Symphony and of the Sacramento Philharmonic, said at one panel, paraphrasing Samuel Johnson on the effect of witnessing a hanging.
Yet at least in the open sessions (open, that is, to the entire membership of the league and to the press), there was little hint of panic. Despite frequent references to "these hard times," "economic troubles" and "severe challenges," the word "crisis" was for the most part studiously avoided.
"We've decided to work on the solution side rather than wring our hands," Jack McAuliffe, the league's vice president and chief operating officer, said in conversation.
Mr. McAuliffe points out that in the last recession, during the late 1980's and early 90's, 8 of the nation's 350 or so professional orchestras (those in which at least some members are paid) went out of business, and all have since come back or been replaced in their cities. Again, over the last year or so, 8 orchestras (besides the Florida Philharmonic and the San Antonio Symphony: the Colorado Springs Symphony, the New York Chamber Symphony, the San Jose Symphony, the Savannah Symphony, the Tulsa Philharmonic and the Washington Chamber Symphony) have declared bankruptcy, and most are in reorganization proceedings.
Those figures were recited often during the week. But are all the returns in? Mr. McAuliffe says he knows of no other orchestras teetering on the financial chasm at the moment. And what of the alarming deficits mounting at several major orchestras? Those, too, Mr. McAuliffe maintains, had parallels back then. Hewing again to the party line, he adds that other fields — everything from the airline industry to the National Hockey League — have suffered proportionally greater losses than the orchestral business in the current morass.
In another mantra, Henry Fogel, who has just left his post as president of the Chicago Symphony (having started as executive director in 1985) to become the president of the league, noted both publicly and privately that "Orchestra Balances Budget" or "Orchestra That Is Basically Sound Posts a Smaller Deficit Than Expected" is not a sexy headline. And indeed, as in so many areas of life now, you have to wonder about the impact of the Internet: especially, the daily drumbeat of those dire reports on Web sites that cover the musical scene. There is certainly more immediate awareness of spreading miseries than there was a decade ago.
Still, some attendees found the relentless cheerleading of the public sessions a little eerie in its conscious avoidance if not denial of fundamental problems.
"This conference is a sales pitch," said Joseph H. Kluger, the president of the Philadelphia Orchestra. "But just because these things aren't being addressed publicly doesn't mean they aren't being discussed," he was quick to add, alluding to the private sessions and to informal exchanges among the participants.
And in conversation with this outsider, many of those in the trenches spoke freely of a crisis. Things have never looked this bad, experienced managers of orchestras large and small said in their own mantra.
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"Everybody has been experiencing it," said Gideon Toeplitz, who was the managing director of the Pittsburgh Symphony from 1987 until last month. "If they don't tell you that, they're lying. I'm missing the focus at this meeting."
The official spin, Mr. Toeplitz suggests, is a gross oversimplification. He sees not a cyclical repetition of crises but a continuation of basic structural problems that were masked rather than resolved by the bull market of the 90's.
"The problems will continue no matter what happens to the economy," he said. "We can't continue to think the way we did 50 years ago. Everything has changed around us. You can't focus on just one thing. You have to change everything at the same time: the cost structure, the revenue structure, the product offering. A 10 percent fix is calling for more trouble real soon."
When asked how you get a handle on this total restructuring or where, specifically, you start, Mr. Toeplitz shied away. Nor did he seem impressed with the darling of the conference, the recent contract settlement at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, where the players agreed to salary cuts in exchange for greater managerial and artistic control. There, the role of the music director in programming, auditioning and personnel matters has been diminished (with the approval of the incumbent, Andreas Delfs), making him more the "principal conductor" of a collective of players, along the lines of some European orchestras.
This restructuring, with pay cuts as a more or less central element, was widely espoused as a model for the future, even among larger orchestras. (The St. Louis Symphony and the New Jersey Symphony had begun to explore avenues of collaboration even before St. Paul agreement.)
For Mr. Toeplitz, this was merely another balloon to prick. "These are just processes," he said. "The question is, what are they going to do with these processes? Are they going to spend enough time addressing audience issues and relevance issues?" Again, he stopped short of suggesting ways to do so.
Among the major orchestras, the issue of salaries and overall compensation has become crucial. To dwell on this matter at the risk of another kind of oversimplification: during the last half century, the lot of orchestral musicians has improved tremendously, and rightly so. They had been underpaid and often abused by autocratic music directors and managers. An exponential growth in festivals and special events afforded players fuller or year-round employment, and the plusher economic times allowed many to catch up with and in some cases surpass the prosperity around them.
But despite economic downturns, the players have tended to remain in catch-up mode, expecting salary increases like those of the last contract or those granted their orchestral peers, whichever are higher. Managements, fearing strikes, have largely acceded. Even before the economic swoon following Sept. 11, many in the field had come to realize that the salary increases were more than the market could bear.
Over the last decade or so, the pace-setter was Mr. Fogel's Chicago Symphony. "I believe that in really good economic times orchestras should not spend up to their revenues and should instead go for a surplus and keep a cushion for the future," Mr. Fogel told The New York Times last month. "I wish I'd believed that 10 or 15 years ago."
When questioned about the issue here, Mr. Fogel offered an example of the masking Mr. Toeplitz referred to. A decade or so ago, the Chicago Symphony "hid its deficit," Mr. Fogel said, diverting a $10 million bequest that would ordinarily have been parked in the orchestra's endowment to cover operating costs. Asked specifically about players' salaries, Mr. Fogel said: "That's too politically loaded. I would never blame the unions." (The current base salary for Chicago players is $100,100; most make more, some much more.)
Michael Kaiser, the president of the Kennedy Center in Washington, which runs the National Symphony, said, "Orchestras are trapped by fixed costs." And the major element of fixed costs is the players' salaries and compensation packages. It can be eased only by reducing the number of players, a move almost sure to affect artistic quality, or cutting salaries or increases, with all the risks that would entail. (Even with such talk wafting around them, player representatives, given a newly prominent role in the conference, generally joined the chorus on behalf of labor peace and cooperation.)
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Most orchestras have already trimmed administrative staffs to the bone. So the best recourse in the present crisis — and Mr. Kaiser is another who uses the word freely — is clearly to increase revenues. That was the focus of many of the strategic sessions, and as became painfully apparent, it is easier said than done in the current economy. Endowments are sagging and contributions from individuals, corporations, foundations and governmental sources, once lavish, are harder to come by.
Still, unlike Mr. Toeplitz, Mr. Kaiser, who has brought institutions ranging from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to the Royal Opera House in London back from the brink of bankruptcy, holds that the orchestra can be made to work in its traditional makeup, without radical restructuring.
"It all has to do with programming and aggressive marketing," Mr. Kaiser said. "The natural tendency in a time of crisis is to pull in, but that is exactly the wrong thing to do." What is needed is visibility, he suggests, and success breeds success. He mounted an acclaimed Sondheim festival at the Kennedy Center last year, and he has programmed a major Tchaikovsky festival for December.
"Every orchestra can do this," Mr. Kaiser said. Others are skeptical. Some would argue that Sondheim and Tchaikovsky are not all that adventurous to begin with, and the Kennedy Center can readily command resources like the Kirov Opera of St. Petersburg to complement its own forces. Such grandiose projects might not relate to the more mundane and intransigent problems facing most orchestras, especially smaller ones. Mr. Kaiser would counter with his work at Ailey, done on a shoestring.
For some, like the perennially challenged Brooklyn Philharmonic, presenting adventurous, highly visible and acclaimed projects has at times meant living beyond their means. That orchestra has been making strides toward stability in recent years, with Robert Spano as its accomplished and imaginative music director, but it is still hard to see the light.
"The tunnel seems longer these days, at least in New York," said Catherine Cahill, the orchestra's chief executive officer.
On the brighter side, the San Francisco Symphony, which played host to the conference, has balanced its budget in recent years, largely on the strength of enterprising programming under its music director, Michael Tilson Thomas. During the conference, in fact, it offered a minifestival, "Innocence Undone: Wagner, Weill and the Weimar Years," featuring an evocative semistaged production of Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" and performances by the torchy Ute Lemper.
"You have to be optimistic to do this kind of thing," said Brent Assink, the orchestra's executive director. "Music has such great powers of resiliency. If we were to come out at the other end of this ordeal cautious and reluctant to take risks, that would be a real tragedy."