South Coast Symphony’s Season Periled

Financial problems could cause the South Coast Symphony to cancel the rest of its season, officials announced this week.

An orchestra-sponsored concert featuring singer Florence Henderson will proceed Sunday night as scheduled. However, the orchestra no longer can afford to pay its own members to play on the program, as intended.

Instead, Henderson will be backed by four of her own accompanists, “which will save us approximately $8,000 (in salaries to orchestra members),” said Doreen Hardy, the orchestra’s manager.

“We are having severe cash-flow difficulties now,” Hardy said. “Right now, with bills we owe, we are looking for approximately $25,000 to $30,000 that we have to raise during the month of January to continue our season.”

Hardy said the problems result from continuing drops in subscriptions, stemming at least in part from the orchestra’s move from Costa Mesa into a Santa Ana neighborhood that concert-goers find threatening. Corporate funding also has fallen off, she said.

Hardy said a task force of 12 musicians, board members and community leaders has been formed to address the situation and “to raise some immediate monies.” The task force, headed by Costa Mesa Mayor Peter F. Buffa, will meet Thursday. The board will meet Dec. 20. If the remainder of the season is canceled, the orchestra “would make every attempt to refund subscribers’ money,” Hardy said.

Among other things, the orchestra is “obligated to pay our musicians for a November concert,” Hardy said. “Normally, we should have paid that this week and we haven’t been able to. In order to talk about future performances, it’s only fair to pay them first. We won’t have enough cash on hand for normal operating expenses if we don’t raise that money.”

“Beyond that, we need to raise $100,000 over the next 3 or 4 months in order to be really solvent” to guarantee musicians’ salaries for the three remaining concerts of the season.

Board members don’t want to let the orchestra keep operating with a deficit, Hardy said. Unless the orchestra can establish some commercial viability, board members feel, attempts to keep it alive would be pointless.

Some fund-raising efforts already have succeeded. An appeal for funds made from the stage at the orchestra’s concert with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet on Nov. 19 netted “almost $4,000,” Hardy said.

The board also is talking with the Community Services Department at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, which helped the 5-year-old orchestra during its first 2 years with a partnership agreement whereby ticket income was shared with the college in exchange for free use of its Robert B. Moore Theatre and administrative assistance, according to conductor Larry Granger. The orchestra was based at OCC until it started playing in Santa Ana in 1987, and still plays half its concerts there.

“We’ve always looked to the average citizen to help the orchestra,” Granger continued. “There has not been one great benefactor to South Coast Symphony who guarantees its existence. . . . Basically, we have to look to people who want to support local good music and the development of musicians in the community.”

The 80-member orchestra, whose budget is $208,000, began facing problems in 1987 when it ended its fiscal year with a deficit of $14,000. By the end of last season, the deficit had grown to $25,000, according to Hardy.

“Most symphonies do carry somewhat of a deficit,” Hardy said. “But our board doesn’t want to. The board wants to be financially responsible.”

Board vice president and acting treasurer Jeffrey Whiting said: “We have no intention of closing the doors. (But) if we do not have the support in the community and among our subscribers on a timely basis, the board would seriously consider going dark for a period of time in order to reorganize the organization. . . . But I don’t think that decision can be made until the task force meets.”

Whiting said the orchestra went through a similar crisis a year ago. “But we rallied and were able to raise about $20,000 to $25,000,” he said.

However, subscriptions to the orchestra have dropped from 600 in 1986-87 to 356. Hardy said potential audience members are “oversubscribed” to other events, including concerts at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

She also attributed the problem to concert-goers’ unhappiness with the neighborhood around Santa Ana High School. “We had a lot of complaints about our Santa Ana location,” Hardy said. “The acoustics are superb, but people are afraid to go into the neighborhood.”

The orchestra experienced “over a $50,000 drop” in corporate and orchestra-guild contributions, Hardy said, asserting that the drop has resulted from corporate budget cutbacks. “We’ve talked with corporate donors, and they have told us that in no case did (the cuts) have anything to do with the quality of the orchestra,” she said.

As recently as August, Granger had been optimistic about the orchestra’s future, projecting a $350,000 budget figure for 1988-89 and declaring that subscriptions were holding steady.

But Hardy said Thursday that those numbers were “only projections” and that the orchestra’s subsequent subscription drive had failed to reach its goals.

The South Coast Symphony will present Florence Henderson singing holiday and contemporary favorites Sunday at 8:15 p.m. in the Robert B. Moore Theatre at Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $9 to $21. Information: (714) 662-7220.