The Symphony’s Comeback: A Success or Just a Beginning?

The book is closed on the San Diego Symphony’s comeback winter season. However, careful readers may find it more a cautionary tale than a success story.

“Many thought we’d never start, and more thought we’d never make it this far,” said symphony executive director Wesley Brustad. “But we are here, and the thing about it, (for) our subscription (series), our expectations were exceeded in attendance and income.”

Income for the two classical music series was about $40,000 above projections, bolstered by an 80% renewal rate by subscribers who had purchased tickets to the canceled 1986-87 season, Brustad said.

But total earned income from all concerts was below projections. Poor attendance at a handful of experimental morning and early-night concerts aimed at the senior and yuppie market, pulled income down $110,000 below the projected winter goal of $1.26 million.

Brustad blamed the shortfall on the “incredibly short fuse we had to start up. I didn’t start marketing till August (for a season that opened in November) because we didn’t have a season until July.”

The symphony can boast some major achievements. The previous administration had taken its $500,000 revolving line of credit (through a consortium of local banks) to the maximum, and the account balance is now zero, according to Brustad.

The Nickelodeon Concert series, introduced this winter, was a resounding success and may become a permanent fixture on the symphony’s winter schedule. The coming Nickelodeon series, featuring symphonic accompaniment to silent film classics, has already sold more than 120% of projected subscription sales for next season, as did a new classical hits series debuting this fall, Brustad said.

Work is proceeding apace on Symphony Towers, a $150-million, hotel-office-restaurant-club complex being built above and around Symphony Hall. Symphony management expects the mixed-use complex to generate walk-up business and produce an annual payment tied to leased space that could exceed $200,000 a year. The first steel trusses that will join the two towers and support a garage and lobby above Symphony Hall were installed last week.

The season just closed came after a year’s hiatus when the 1986-87 season was canceled because of financial and labor problems. Management signed a two-year contract with the musicians in June, 1987. Brustad and his staff then put together a season that was marked by conservatism, musically and fiscally.

Brustad recently discussed some of the strategy behind the winter season and what the symphony will do differently in the 1988-89 season.

For 1987-88, he pushed ticket prices to the limit.

“It was the only fiscally responsible thing to do,” Brustad said. “This orchestra hits the wall, so when it hits the wall, what do you do? Keep giving tickets away? People have got to start paying for it. And if they’re not going to pay for it, well then fine, we know what it’s all about in this town.”

On the low end of the scale, single-ticket prices were raised 76% from $8.50 in the 1985-86 season to $15. At the top end, Brustad pushed the price from $27.50 to $32, up 16% from the 1985-86 level.

“A thing that I have learned over the years is that, if people want to go to something, the price is immaterial unless it gets to $50 to $60,” he said. “There is a ceiling. But, if you want to go see an ice show . . . the Olympics skaters, if you want to see a rock rock show . . . the symphony, if you want to see Ashkenazy, you’re going to pay the money. You will see it.

“Time is the biggest problem. I’ve got to convince you that it’s worth your time to come down here.”

This season, the symphony persuaded enough people to reach an average paid audience of 62% of capacity of the 2,200-seat Symphony Hall. But, despite higher ticket prices, total revenue went down.

“Our paid capacity was 62%, but we ran fewer performances,” said Brustad. He said the paid capacity of the previous season (‘85-’86) averaged about 40%. Even with smaller houses, however, simple arithmetic shows that the 1985-86 season sold in round numbers 6,600 more tickets. The orchestra played 85 concerts that season, as opposed to 50 Symphony Hall performances in 1987-88.

Brustad also says he squelched a traditional practice of giving out free tickets when sales are low.

“What was happening in this town was that, at the last minute, the day or two before, tickets were being dumped to make the house look good,” he said. “Well, just sit around and wait--you could get a free ticket. You didn’t have to buy one. I refuse to do that. So, on some of our houses this year, on things like the cocktail concerts which were very poorly attended, I would not dump tickets. You just can’t train an audience that way.”

However, when told of reports that the orchestra had indeed dumped some tickets this year, symphony spokesman Les Smith acknowledged that, on “a couple of concerts,” tickets were sent to donors who were not subscribers.

“We had the tickets,” Smith said. “Those situations were the exceptions rather than the rule.”

Fund raising is on track. With four months remaining in the symphony’s fiscal year, about $1.6 million of the budgeted $2 million has been raised.

“Donors really came back in the fold, and a lot of people stepped forward and made some very significant gifts because they knew that many people still were sitting on the fence waiting,” Smith said.

Though earned income was short of budget by about 8%, the other side of the balance sheet --expenses--may offset that. At the midyear mark, expenses were running 9% under budget. The cost cutting was across the board, Brustad said.

“We nickeled and dimed every single thing here,” he said. “It’s just maintaining very tight fiscal control and saying ‘no’ to everybody.

“We suffer for it, too. And one area we suffer for it is in promotions. You don’t know if you spend another $100,000, is that going to generate $200,000 worth of tickets or $300,000 or $50,000? At this point in our comeback, we cannot even afford to gamble on it.”

The symphony’s approach is to pinpoint its most likely market, he said, before dedicating more money for advertising. This summer the orchestra’s marketing committee will assess the market.

“Our demographic here is very broadly . . . 40-45 plus in age,” Brustad said. “It’s going to be higher income. It’s going to be higher educated. In Southern California, that’s a big group of people, unlike other cities in the country. So the next problem is to narrow that band even further.

“The way you sell tickets most effectively in an organization like this is through an incredible volunteer structure, which we have not had the time to set up, and through a very, very carefully targeted, rifle approach to the best potential buyer.”

The crunch of just getting through the first season prevented the creation of both the volunteer structure and a strategic marketing plan, Smith said.

“The first year has been spent putting the structure back together. It’s just one of the many things you’d like to do, but time, resources and other factors were not available to us before.”

Brustad echoed Smith. “We don’t have anything articulated formally,” he said of a volunteer program. Selling the symphony is more of a personal matter, he said. “It’s one on one, people talking to people. Nothing beats it. It’s just like raising money.

“The first order of business of the marketing committee is to define who our prospective customers are,” said the committee chairman, Page Jones, who is the former president and chairman of the board of the Phillips-Ramsey advertising and public relations agency.

“We have to put together a marketing plan to make the symphony (market itself) smarter,” Jones said. “We’ve got to know what we’re about and make every dollar behave like 10 because we have very, very limited marketing funds available at the symphony.”

Artistically, the symphony suffers from gaps in its musical leadership. Brustad has said the symphony will appoint a new music director by April, 1989, to replace David Atherton, who resigned amid the bitter labor strife in February, 1987. But there are other critical vacancies, including the crucial concertmaster post and four principal and associate principal positions.

Despite holding a pair of national auditions this spring, the symphony has failed to fill three of nine important principal chairs in the strings. Another position, principal bass, was vacated only last week when Peter Rofe, who had been on two years’ leave of absence with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, resigned to stay with that orchestra. Jerry Folsom, the symphony’s principal French horn, is also on a leave of absence playing with the Philharmonic.

The symphony has filled 15 vacancies this spring, including five principal positions for trumpet, trombone, cello, and assistant concertmaster and associate principal for the first violins. Who will fill the key position of concertmaster--even on an acting basis for next season--remains unresolved.

“That’s a problem I’ve thrown at (recently appointed music adviser) Lynn Harrell,” Brustad said.

Though orchestra musicians expressed enthusiasm when Harrell’s former student, Eric Kim, won the principal cello audition in mid-May, the 23-year-old cellist from the Denver Symphony is less than seasoned, as is Heather Buchman, a 1987 college graduate who was recently signed as first chair trombone.

“The salaries the symphony offers are just not enough to pique the interest of the players we need,” said section violist Gary Cole Syroid. “Those who do come to San Diego to audition tend to be be like Kim--young and just out of school. They could earn so much more somewhere else.”

According to a report by the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, the basic annual wage ($18,400) of a San Diego Symphony player ranks among the lowest in the country. Among 41 major orchestras nationwide, San Diego’s pay scale is eighth from the bottom, surpassed even by orchestras in smaller cities such as Phoenix; Indianapolis; Portland, Ore.; and Syracuse, N.Y.

Considering the local orchestra’s recent traumas, it may be some time before able instrumentalists across the country perceive San Diego as a place to relocate.

“If our reputation remains stable for a couple seasons, it will be easier to attract the candidates we really need,” bass player Gregory Berton said.

Another problem was last month’s Radiothon held at Horton Plaza, which brought in a record low $43,000, only half the amount symphony management projected for the week-end fund-raiser. Brustad, however, was reluctant to give an analysis of what went wrong.

“This was my first Radiothon,” he explained, “and having watched it, now there are 1,000 things I would do differently, starting with when do you do it. And I don’t think it’s the middle of May.”

Among the factors that hampered Radiothon were the lack of participation by the symphony’s auxiliary council and a lack of publicity. Brustad noted that the auxiliary council did not take an active role in Radiothon, as it did in the 1970s, because it was preoccupied with preparations for its annual formal ball in June. Typical of publicity that was too late to be helpful was local television coverage of the closing of the Radiothon Sunday night rather than for its opening Saturday morning.