San Diego Symphony Season Saw Attendance, Ticket Sales Increase

The San Diego Symphony pushed its attendance and ticket sales up a notch during the just-closed 1989 winter season, a symphony spokesman said Wednesday.

Average concert attendance grew from 68% to 71% of capacity in the 2,250-seat Symphony Hall. The number of concerts increased to 57, up from 51 in 1988. Although ticket sales grew from $1.15 million to $1.27 million, they fell $120,000 shy of the projected $1.39 million, symphony spokesman Les Smith said.

“We’re about 92% of budget (in ticket sales),” Smith said. “We’re looking to make up the sales during the summer season. Expenses are a little lower than projected.”

The end of the season also brought the appointment April 25 of conductor Yoav Talmi as music director designate. The 46-year-old Israeli will take the artistic reins in October, 1990.

The music director’s post had been vacant 27 months, since British conductor David Atherton resigned in February, 1987, amid a bitter labor dispute. Since then, relations between the musicians and the board of directors and management have improved markedly. The current two-year players’ contract expires in September, and both sides expect bargaining to be more amicable when talks resume next month.

Dennis Michel, the orchestra’s principal bassoon who serves as a member of the corporate board of directors, said, “I think this is by far the most competent management that we’ve had. Things are functioning more smoothly than they have in the eight years since I’ve been here.”

However, the symphony continues to experience relatively low attendance for its core series of classical concerts. Average attendance for 30 concerts in 1987-88 was 1,379, Smith said. The average house for 40 concerts this year dropped to 1,201, although overall attendance for the classical series increased by 6,679.

“One factor we see working in our favor is the longer we perform, the more (people) we have to come back to the orchestra or join us new,” he said.

In an effort to expand audiences, the symphony continues to bring a diversity to concerts, and the strategy is paying off. Total attendance for the winter season increased from 77,980 to 91,369.

The symphony’s “Nickelodeon” concerts, featuring orchestra accompaniment to vintage silent films, were virtual sellouts.

The season’s new “Classical Hits” series, which featured guest conductor Murry Sidlin, was a box-office hit as well, with a base of 60% subscription sales for all four concerts.

The symphony remains undiscouraged by relatively poor attendance at its Saturday afternoon “Family Series,” Smith said. With ticket prices for the family series at a rock bottom $3 apiece, the problem was not the cost of tickets. The three-concert series will be shifted to Sundays next season. “Since we’re trying to attract children and their parents, we’ve found that on Sunday afternoons we’ll run into fewer scheduling conflicts,” Smith said.

The symphony will add a “Pulitzer Prize” series in the upcoming winter season, featuring three concerts of 20th-Century music by Pulitzer Prize-winning musicians. Co-sponsored by UC San Diego, the concerts will be given at the university’s Mandeville Auditorium.

In the artistic arena, the orchestra has filled all but two seats--the principal horn and bass chairs--in the 81-member orchestra.

Smith said it is the first time in years that so many positions have been filled with permanent rather than substitute players.

“In the spring, we filled six positions,” Smith said. “Last year, we filled our principal cello. Few can remember when we’ve had such a complete ensemble.”

The competitive world of symphony orchestras does not make matters easier. New principal trumpet Calvin Price and new principal cellist Eric Kim, who have been with the orchestra less than a year, have won auditions at other orchestras, in positions that would double their San Diego salaries. Their departures would open up two more vacancies.

And management is searching for a replacement for chief fund-raising officer John Bauser, who was wooed away earlier this year to become executive director of the Dayton, Ohio, Philharmonic.

Meanwhile, the orchestra still has to drum up $200,000 to meet its fund-raising goal of $2.4 million for 1989 and balance its $6.5-million budget by Sept. 30. And it must keep chipping away at its $3.6-million debt, incurred in 1985, for the purchase and renovation of Symphony Hall.