Group Aims Protest at Symphony’s Managers

Angered by the cancellation of the San Diego Symphony’s winter concert season after $2.4 million was raised in the spring to “save” the orchestra, a grass-roots group of music lovers have banded together and are urging season-ticket holders to demand refunds.

The group, which formally organized Sunday night as the Citizen Support Group for Symphonic Music in San Diego, is pushing for ticket refunds, it says, until concertgoers get a fuller explanation of the symphony’s financial problems.

A total of 8,946 subscriptions were sold for the canceled season. The price of subscriptions ranged from a $24 for a five-concert series to $448 for a 20-concert series.

“In encouraging people to take their money away from the symphony association, we seem to be in good company,” support group spokeswoman Trudy Robideau said.

Last week COMBO, the county’s private arts funding organization, withheld its monthly payments to the symphony (approximately $18,000 to $20,000) for 60 days, pending an agreement with locked-out musicians. At the same time the California Arts Council canceled half of a scheduled $50,000 grant to the symphony and withheld the remaining $25,000, pending the outcome of contract talks in December.

The new group wants to create a voice for the audiences to “communicate what we feel” to the musicians and the symphony.

“I think the musicians and the symphony . . . didn’t know how strongly the public feels,” said Robideau, who works for an architectural consulting firm.

Although she is not a season subscriber, Robideau said she had attended concerts regularly, and said that her family made a $100 donation during the emergency fund-raising campaign in March. “I know that is not much, but it was a lot for our family,” she said.

Another purpose of the Citizens Support Group is to provide encouragement for the newly formed San Diego Philharmonic, which hopes to present concerts so that the symphony musicians can play and earn some money while there is no contract with the symphony.

Symphony President Herbert J. Solomon said the formation of the philharmonic was not “in the best interests of the community.”

Solomon said that, if the members of the support group were “really serious and sincere, why wouldn’t they come to ask us” questions rather than go to the news media. Symphony Executive Director Wesley O. Brustad would not comment on the new support group.

Andrew Huff, founder of the support group, said Monday that he had talked with a symphony official but that he didn’t receive specific answers about how the $2.4 million and an additional $500,000 was spent. “It was just typical public relations answers. She gave me a lot of reading material,” he said, which he has not yet read.

Huff said he began the support group after talking to musicians. “I thought the symphony association was getting away with murder,” he said. “The public, I think, has been taken for a ride. I don’t know whether the symphony association is in the real estate business or in the music business.”

Huff doubts the symphony’s assertions that the $2.4 million in crisis money went into operating costs and not into capital accounts for the maintenance and improvement of Symphony Hall.

Robideau said the support group wants the symphony board to be more representative of the community. Like most boards of arts organizations, new symphony board members are chosen by the existing board.

Board members “don’t even know they’re losing touch with the community,” Robideau said. “Having turned to the public and said save your symphony, then they turned around and said we’re closing our symphony down.”

“Mr. Solomon said they didn’t want to come to the public for another crisis appeal,” Robideau said of the symphony’s position on the stalemated labor talks. “But why are they shutting out the public? How dare he shut us out. We still feel it is our symphony.”