Crain’s New York Business reported back on November 8 that the board of the Brooklyn Philharmonic is considering bankruptcy.
Another victim of the financial downturn of 2008, the Brooklyn Philharmonic canceled its 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons. While 2011-12, the orchestra’s only full season with the now infamous Richard Dare as CEO and Alan Pierson as artistic director, was a great artistic success, they’ve been practically dormant since then.
Last winter, when working at the Rochester Philharmonic, one of our musicians sent me an article by Zachary Lewis on the outstanding success the Cleveland Orchestra had last fall in increasing its ticket revenue by focusing on students and young people, groups that are often afterthoughts in classical-music marketing strategies. Overall, earned income was up 24% in the first half of this season (the article ran January 19), and student attendance was up 55%.
The Cleveland Orchestra got there by offering $10 student tickets, and a $50 Frequent Fan card, which gave students access to as many concerts as they could take. Also, the orchestra gave out 26,112 free tickets to children. To prime the pump for all of this, Cleveland started October with Student Appreciation Weekend.
While worrying about the aging out (dying out) of their audiences, orchestras and classical-music presenters come up with a host of excuses to ignore the youngest concertgoers: students have no money to spend; they are itinerant and can’t be counted on as long-time patrons; there just isn’t money in the budget to spend on heavily discounted tickets. (I’m guilty of uttering all of these at different points in my working life.)
What the Cleveland Orchestra has shown is that attracting students is a money maker, and a great way to fill a hall. All it takes is putting aside the empty excuses and getting to work. If you show them you care, they will come.
Mark Stryker of the Free Press recently wrote about how the Detroit Symphony is faring two years after settling its embarrassing, divisive strike. Some of the changes that the orchestra has made shows that the board and management are really making efforts to be forward-looking and relevant to today’s audiences.
For one thing, management is incentivizing musicians to participate in community engagement. Although the orchestra took a 23% pay cut–the base salary is still $81,000, pretty good in a city that has no money–there is a clause stating that musicians will get an extra $7,000 if they participate in education and “outreach” programs. It’s essential for orchestras to start thinking of themselves not as concert promoters exclusively, but as educators and advocates for their art; the bonus money, although modest, at least shows that the DSO is aware of this reality.
The DSO is also opening up new ways for people to enjoy its traditional repertoire. Because the contract agreed upon in 2011 made it less costly for management to distribute recordings, the orchestra now reaches an extra 10,000 per concert through internet broadcasts. The DSO is also playing 25% of its classical concerts on a suburban concert series that has brought in 2,200 new season-ticket holders.
A number of musicians bolted during the strike, but now the DSO is replacing them with fantastic new, young musicians. Stryker says that “the orchestra has hit home run after home run in auditions” and points to the orchestra’s new concertmaster, Yoonshin Song, as an example.
The Baltimore Symphony announced last week that its music director, Marin Alsop, is funding a project to have students from Parsons The New School for Design to come up with new duds for the orchestra that will “erase any pre-conceived notions of what a concert should look like.”
Meanwhile, in Florida (or course), a well-meaning group of business owners in Delray Beach donated uniforms designed by Futuristic Woo (who?) to a local high-school football team, resulting in this:
Tread lightly, Baltimore.
A round-up of posts about orchestras’ labor-and-management problems, from the bloggers who’ve been following the situation:
Adaptistration (Drew McManus):
Someone at the National Symphony has been bragging about its nice new contract; Indiana Symphony management has defended itself with a lengthy press statement, and the San Antonio musicians have filed a lawsuit claiming that their orchestra’s management refuses to talk.
Slipped Disc (Norman LeBrecht):
LeBrecht calls for new blood in orchestral leadership; lists the orchestras that we know won’t be starting their seasons on time.
One of the orchestras LeBrecht targets is Minnesota; Pioneer Press reports on both the proposed cuts to that band’s salaries and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s as well. Buffalo News’s Mary Kunz Goldman responds, is thankful for her hometown orchestra.
Deceptive Cadence (Tom Huizenga):
Huizenga highlights recordings he likes from the Atlanta Symphony, to hold us over while the musicians are locked out.
There had been no news on the status of negotiations since the administration-imposed deadline of August 25 had passed, but now Drew McManus reports that the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has stopped providing benefits to its musicians–it’s a lockout.
It’s hard to imagine losing 40% of your income in one fell swoop, but that’s what might happen to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra musicians, who are negotiating a contract with management. Drew McManus gives an overview here, and argues that the big problem is a lack of administrative leadership. (It’s not that they’re leadership is weak or ineffective: they have no CEO and no VP of Development.) The current contract expires September 3.
The San Antonio Symphony has been working under an extension of its 2007-11 contract, and its expiring today. The musicians asked its board for talks back on August 14; in April, when the musicians last requested talks, management said they weren’t ready.
Things aren’t so great for either Minneapolis-area orchestras, either.
No news in Atlanta, though.
Update (Saturday, September 1)
John Clare of Texas Public Radio in San Antonio let me know that you can find the letter here, as well as an interview with the musicians’ negotiating committee.
The administration-imposed deadline to settle a deal with the the musicians union in Atlanta has passed, but according to statements on both sides, they’re still negotiating. Read about it here.
According to Adaptistration and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has set midnight this Saturday as the deadline for when its musicians must reach agreement with them on a new contract.
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Players Association released a statement claiming that the ASO’s negotiator, Don Fox, wrote: “unless an agreement is reached by midnight, August 25th, we have no authority to continue income for Musicians, either pay or benefits, beyond that date.”
The musicians, as reported in the Journal-Constitution, are willing to take an 11% cut in pay (base salary is $88,400) if staff also takes a hit. Orchestra president Stanley Romanstein claims that the administration has already seen its remuneration decrease by 1.7% since 2006, while the musicians have said that staff salaries have increased by 50% over the same period. (I’m not sure what accounts for the hugely divergent numbers.)
The ASO is facing an accumulated debt of $20 million, and has an annual operating budget of about $46 million.
Read about it here, here, and here.
It’s been a tough couple of weeks for the ASO. Back on August 12, it had to fake its way through an Il Divo concert, a humiliating affair, and also has been accused of reverse discrimination (the ASO’s side of the story here).
Last weekend, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s board voted to restructure under Chapter 11; now, the New Mexico Symphony in Albuquerque is closing up shop.
One musician called out Board of Directors Vice-Chair George Boerigter, saying that less than two weeks ago the musicians were told the symphony was headed toward Chapter 11 reorganization.
Talk of financial trouble dates back to 2008, and board member George Boerigter claims that the orchestra didn’t even have the funds available to restructure under Chapter 7.
Earlier this month, the Syracuse Symphony also folded, citing an inability to raise money for even the rest of the season, and the Detroit Symphony, while avoiding bankruptcy, ended a strike that saw musicians’ salaries cut to offset crushingly large debt.
As John O’Brien points out, Syracuse isn’t just losing a professional orchestra–its youth orchestra is also folding.
On Monday, the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra board announced that they will file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, citing its $5 million debt and inability to raise the $7 million it needed to finish the season. The youth orchestra operated as part of the Syracuse Symphony’s organization.
Since just after Christmas, the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra had been trying to raise money to save its season. They didn’t quite get there: today, its board of trustees announced that it is cancelling the rest of the season, citing, in part, its inability to reach its March fundraising goal.
Mark Likes Music 
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