Symphony Deadlock Likely to Kill Season

Barring an unexpected development, the San Diego Symphony will announce Tuesday that its winter concert season has been canceled.

Contract talks with musicians have been at an impasse for 23 days. No meetings are scheduled. Neither side expects an 11th-hour agreement.

The sixth winter season under Music Director David Atherton was to have begun Oct. 23. Six weeks of the season already have been lopped off by the board of directors. Symphony President Herbert Solomon has vowed to staunch a 10-year flow of red ink even if it requires scuttling the season.

Management and the musicians remain $500,000 apart on wages as the symphony insists on an 11% pay cut for musicians. They also disagree over a package of proposals involving auditioning and firing procedures and the scheduling of concerts around San Diego Opera performances. Formerly, the symphony and opera were scheduled so that most of the symphony musicians could play all of the San Diego Opera concerts--picking up some extra money. Scheduling in recent years has precluded that.

The previous three-year contract expired Aug. 31. Management has not paid the players since Sept. 15. However, symphony Executive Director Wesley O. Brustad has maintained the payments on the musicians’ health insurance as provided under the old contract.

Brustad was chosen this summer, after a national search, to lead the symphony out of its financial morass. He has turned around similar situations with musical groups in Spokane, Wash., and Los Angeles. But in San Diego, matters are complicated by the bitter labor dispute.

For years the San Diego musicians, who are some of the lowest paid among the country’s top 30 major orchestras, have repeatedly supported the board through recurring financial crises. In 1981 and 1982 they played for weeks even though the symphony did not have money to pay them.

The players permitted the cancellation of the 1982 summer pops season to help the symphony through its difficult times. As recently as this March’s emergency fund-raising campaign, the musicians played without pay while the symphony raised $2.4 million.

Now the musicians have drawn the line. They say they will not play this year unless they are adequately compensated.

Solomon and Brustad agree that the musicians are underpaid but claim that they cannot in good conscience offer more money. Despite the $2.4 million raised, the symphony ended its fiscal year $877,000 in debt.

Under Brustad, proposed expenses in this year’s budget have been cut by $1.5 million. Even so, the 1986-87 symphony budget projects a $700,000 deficit, not counting the $500,000 the players are demanding.