MUSIC : An Upbeat Update on American Orchestras

The much-bruited recent demise of a few orchestras does not mean the other 1,400 American orchestras are dying, according to speakers at the national conference of the American Symphony Orchestra League here.

“It’s been blown out of proportion,” said Henry Fogel, executive director of the host Chicago Symphony.

Catherine French, chief executive officer of the league, agreed. “Basically, orchestras in this country refuse to die.”

“Orchestras Forge Ahead: New Audiences/New Directions” was the upbeat theme of the conference--the 43rd for the service organization, which has 83 member organizations in California alone, ranging from the North Coast Symphony to the South Coast Symphony, from the Los Angeles Philharmonic to the Orange County Youth Symphony Junior Orchestra. The conference drew more than 1,800 celebrants last week.

This industrious forging ahead, however, was not being done without some worried backward glances. Cautionary tales were told in abundance, publicly and privately, as the emotional context (as well as the objective content) of the conference varied from pep rallies through business seminars to post mortems.

Evidence for optimism came from some surprising directions. At the closing session of the conference, Adelaide Benjamin, president of the New Orleans Symphony, objected vigorously to having her orchestra labeled “defunct.” The New Orleans Symphony, faced with a $3.5-million debt, canceled the final 10 weeks of the season in January. The staff has been kept operational, however. “We’re still here, and we’re going to open next year. You just wait and see,” she exclaimed, to loud cheers.

There are other examples closer to hand. In recent years, orchestras in Sacramento, San Jose, Long Beach and San Diego have canceled all or part of seasons. Yet all have returned and appear organizationally viable, at the very least.

An even more remarkable revival is apparently under way in Oakland. In September, 1986, the Oakland Symphony Orchestra Assn. suddenly and spectacularly--and to all appearances, permanently--sank in a Chapter 7 liquidation. Subsidiary groups, such as the Youth Orchestra, Chorus, and Symphony League volunteers, incorporated separately. But East Bay representatives showed up at the conference, looking for a new executive director for a renascent orchestra in Oakland.

By general conference consensus, the dramatic failures and triumphal recoveries of orchestras are failures and triumphs of leadership, a conclusion perhaps not altogether unexpected at a meeting of the nation’s orchestral leaders. Though reluctant to generalize, French said about orchestras that fail: “It is not unusual to find that the real, committed, fired-up leadership is not there.”

League chairman Peter Kermani was even blunter: “At some point in their past, their leadership must have forgotten about the music,” he said, referring to orchestras that have collapsed in the past year.

In a wise and witty luncheon address, Oregon Symphony music director James DePreist said:

“It is not money that we must raise. It’s consciousness that we must raise, consciousness of the bottom-line indispensability of the dynamic 20th-Century American orchestra. . . . and consciousness of the magnitude of the loss when an orchestra disappears.”

DePreist’s thesis was that money is “the least reliable index of an orchestra’s true state of affairs.” Dollars, DePreist said, are only symptoms of support.

“Symphony orchestras are not artistically credible because they have raised millions of dollars--they’ve raised millions of dollars because they are artistically credible.”

DePreist should know about that--two years ago his Oregon Symphony had its own brush with death, which required quick and extensive fund raising. And as indicated already, “The Oregon Symphony’s march back from the abyss is not unique.”

On the other hand, DePreist also stated that “orchestras throughout North America are experiencing crises that have killed (their operations).” Though many afflicted orchestras have shown surprising resilience, those in Nashville, Tenn., and Vancouver, Canada--to name just the more recent casualties--are still moribund: The wounds are nonetheless lethal for being often self-inflicted.

For many at the conference, though, the more ominous news comes from the future rather than the past. Potential changes in tax laws and regulations governing nonprofit organizations could undermine efforts to expand and support new ways of generating income, while at the same time new reports predict a leveling off, or even decline, in audience sizes.

Several speakers cited a complex, compound governmental Catch-22 in which orchestras are becoming ensnared. Under the Reagan Administration, federal appropriations for the arts have been slashed, with arts groups told that they must look to the private sector. Then the new tax laws created a strong disincentive for charitable contributions. Now, after being told to fill the gap with imaginative, entrepreneurial revenue-generating efforts, tax on nonrelated business income threatens those sources.

William Blair, chairman of the American Arts Alliance, said about the situation: “Make no mistake, what we are talking about is survival.” Anne Murphy, Arts Alliance executive director, warned, “The whole question of ‘nonprofitness’ is being looked at.”

If governmental action--and Blair cautioned that a new president will not be an immediate fix--imperils orchestras’ income, Bradley Morison and Julie Gordon Dalgleish served notice that the difference will not be made up through larger audiences without a change in marketing tactics and a major effort in education. Authors of “Waiting in the Wings,” a book on audience development, they suggest that the natural orchestral audience has already been exploited as thoroughly as possible.

More alarming, they offered evidence that the median age of that audience is increasing. In order to expand and diversify that demographic base, Morison and Dalgleish said that orchestras need to increase their marketing emphasis on single-ticket sales and to provide as much educational outreach as possible.

According to a newly released public opinion survey, “Americans and the Arts, V” attendance at classical concerts may have dropped as much as 26% just since 1984, attributed in large measure to a decline in leisure time. “We have not seen that yet,” French said of the attendance drop, and that report conflicts with the league’s own figures, which show subscription and single-ticket sales broadly up.

The discrepancy has possible explanations: The survey included chamber music and solo recitals (and Morison and Dalgleish also seemed to be referring to arts audiences as a whole, rather than specifically orchestral audiences), and the league statistics derive from its members, arguably the more professional and well-organized orchestras and thus perhaps generating higher audience figures than others.

The diverse panelists of the final session were asked what they felt the greatest problem facing orchestras in the ‘80s was. Most singled out programming--citing the perils of the routine and the fashionable--and education, with a plea for greater emphasis in the schools. The latter urging received support from the “Americans and the Arts, V” survey, which claims that 75%-81% of the public favor regular, full-credit instruction in musical instruments and music appreciation.

The conferees seemed to absorb the barrage of information--the conference schedule alone covered 38 closely printed pages--dutifully. The atmosphere was almost festive, though, as music directors huddled to discuss administrators, executives traded wry anecdotes about their boards, and everybody talked money, in an orgy of networking.

The giving of awards, concerts, and a party or two helped keep the mood upbeat. Robert Shaw was presented with the Gold Baton, and Kenneth Kiesler (who will conduct the Long Beach Symphony in January) won the Helen Thompson Award for his work with the Springfield, Ill., Symphony. Catherine Comet, music director of the Grand Rapids, Mich., Symphony; Jahja Ling, resident conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra; and Neal Stulberg, music director of the New Mexico Symphony (and a scheduled guest conductor of the Pacific Symphony in November), each received $50,000 as recipients of the Seaver Institute/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award.

Conference concerts not only produced some rewarding reminders of what the business is all about, they also represented in area orchestras a microcosm of the variety of ensembles--and their problems--represented in the league as a whole. The Chicago-based Orchestra of Illinois, which recently canceled the rest of its ‘87-88 season because of financial constraints, was revived to open the conference with a well-received program of contemporary music, led by guest Catherine Comet.

The Illinois Chamber Orchestra, a subdivision of the Springfield Symphony, also offered contemporary repertory, conducted by music director Kenneth Kiesler. Playing in a hotel ballroom at noon after a bus ride from Springfield that began six hours earlier, the ensemble nonetheless displayed bright, clean sound, plus some intonation troubles that probably reflected understandable flagging of concentration.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra was well represented in a performance by its training ensemble, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. Associate conductor Kenneth Jean led two works by CSO composer-in-residence John Corigliano, and assistant conductor Michael Morgan was on the podium for the “Rosenkavalier” Suite.

Leonard Bernstein’s first concert with the Chicago Symphony in 37 years easily topped the musical bill. Bernstein was also the center of the conference finale, a gala 70th-birthday dinner party that produced an effusion of sentiment, nonetheless sincere for being so predictable.

The concert found Bernstein guiding a multifaceted account of Shostakovich’s First Symphony, satirically crisp and savagely heavy when called for, but predominately lyrical. Opening the program, John Fiore, Kate Tamarkin and Leif Bjaland--the participants this year in the league’s American Conductors Program--led prosaic performances of Strauss tone poems.

There had been much cheerleading about the “product” at the conference, and the performances demonstrated that whatever the economic and organizational troubles of our orchestras, their merchandise remains a significant essential. Or as DePreist put it, “Bottom-liners beware: There is another set of books.”