Symphony Warns Orchestra: Settle or Lose a Season

The entire winter concert season of the San Diego Symphony will be canceled unless a new agreement between musicians and the symphony board of directors is “substantially reached” by Nov. 10, symphony President Herbert Solomon said Friday.

The ultimatum was handed down during an inconclusive three-hour bargaining session called by a state mediator at the request of the symphony board.

“Management is using this approach to fool the public and to cover up its own plan to defraud the community of its orchestra and the musicians of their livelihood, all the time using the musicians as whipping boys,” Greg Berton, chairman of the musicians’ negotiating team, said in a prepared statement.

Berton said the musicians “would not be intimidated” by such tactics.

Earlier this month the symphony canceled the first three weeks of the season, which was to have begun Oct. 23, because symphony management and the musicians were still about $500,000 apart on compensation in a new contract.

Neither Solomon nor symphony Executive Director Wesley O. Brustad was available for comment, but a symphony spokesman confirmed that no progress was made during the talks.

Other arts administrators say that a season cancellation could risk alienating thousands of supporters who contributed more than $13 million in cash and pledges last year, enabling the symphony to purchase and renovate the Fox Theatre and later to avoid declaring bankruptcy.

“The first thing to consider is the good will of your patrons,” Old Globe Theatre Managing Director Tom Hall said. “Continuity is very, very important. It becomes part of your audience’s habit to attend the theater or the symphony. There’s so much competition. You don’t want (your audiences) to get out of the habit if you can.”

The Old Globe had to face closing when its theater was burned to the ground by an arsonist in 1978. Instead of shutting down, the Globe moved its main productions to the Spreckels Theatre downtown and immediately built a temporary outdoor stage to avoid canceling the summer Shakespeare Festival. The theater did lose some playgoers when it began producing downtown, but the doors remained open.

Two years ago, when an arsonist burned the Globe’s outdoor stage, a decision had to be made once again whether to reduce operations or rebuild.

“When the Festival Theater burned, we looked at the cost of not producing,” said Globe development director Cassie Solomon Day. “That theater was 22% of our income. It was also some of our expense.”

The board and management decided to rebuild in time for the next season. “The thing to do is understand the impact financially: how much do you save versus how much do you lose?” Day said.

For some of its supporters, the symphony may have pushed good will to the limit already with this week’s announcement that it ended its fiscal year $877,000 in debt. Earlier this year, after a 10-day emergency campaign that raised $2.4 million, the board of directors promised that there would be no year-end deficit.

“The community doesn’t want words,” said one symphony donor of $1,000 who asked not to be identified. “We’re so damn mad. . . . If they’re not going to give us music, then we want silence. The community doesn’t need this any more. Other arts groups around here somehow manage their affairs. Neither side recognizes the level of anger in this community. All we want to hear is music. If they’re not going to give us music, then they should hang up their jockstraps and put in a call to the L.A. Philharmonic. They could give us 10 or 15 concerts.”

A longtime symphony subscriber, listed in its concert programs as a donor of $500, said: “I think for the first time somebody might be being honest” at the symphony. She and her husband, who both asked not to be named, were not satisfied with their tickets for the summer and winter seasons. But it wasn’t until they failed to receive a thank-you for their emergency campaign contribution that they chose not to renew their season subscriptions.

“I still have questions about that purchase of Symphony Hall,” the woman said. Capital expenditures and operations “are mixed, at least somehow they get muddled together psychologically in people’s minds.”

The symphony board has maintained that the funds raised to purchase the hall could not otherwise have been raised and, in any event, would not have gone toward musicians’ salaries.

The symphony patron said she has “faith in what these people are doing for the first time,” and believes that a symphony “gives dimension to a city, a transporting dimension of life.” But her husband, whom she called an aficionado of classical music, said the symphony has made too many mistakes and he is now contributing money he used to budget for the symphony to another cultural institution.

The Long Beach Symphony canceled its 1984-85 season when it got into financial difficulties. It now operates at scaled-back levels and must post bonds for each concert to ensure that the musicians are paid, the Long Beach Symphony’s finance director said.

“Certainly, confidence would drop” in the event of a season cancellation, said Juan Carillo of the California Arts Council. Carillo is the council official charged with overseeing grants to major institutions. Last year the symphony received a $29,000 grant from the Arts Council and it is scheduled to receive a $50,000 grant this year.

“It does happen,” Carillo said. “Occasionally an outfit reduces activities sharply. But you have to offer some very strong evidence that things will be in place (later) to justify a grant. It really takes much more evidence than what one normally has to provide. (A panel) would be interested in how you are going to attract an audience after you’ve lost them.”

Carillo said the council had two alternatives in that situation.

“If an organization has been in place a long time and the artistic quality is high, then it can be a time for us to stand by them and show we support them,” he said. “Or we can wait and see what the local community does. But if a strong artistic tradition and strong artistic people are in place, many panels will think that is most important.”

Cancellation of the season could scuttle local COMBO funding now budgeted for the symphony. In 1985 the symphony received $240,000 from the local private fund-raising organization. Diane Annala, COMBO vice president, said that COMBO bylaws require its board of directors to reconsider allocations to any beneficiary that “is not presently in an ongoing process.”