The Orchestra’s Subscribers: Fiercely Loyal, Financially Essential and Sometimes Fickle : L.A. CHAMBER ORCHESTRA : Subscribing for All the Seasons

They are the backbone of arts organizations, providing up to 90% of the audiences and of the revenues. Most are fiercely loyal and willing to volunteer their support, such as subscriber Betty Rockwell has done for years at the Pasadena Symphony. But some are fickle, as the Master Chorale of Orange County is discovering as the novelty of its new home at the Performing Arts Center wears off. Even the mighty Los Angeles Philharmonic has a 25% annual subscriber turnover rate. At the Pacific Symphony in Orange County, the goal is to retain 75% to 80% of all subscribers, and at 65% renewals this year it will be a struggle. Why are subscribers so imporant? Single-ticket sales are “scary,” says Deborah Rutter of the L.A. Chamber Orchestra, “because you never know how you’re doing until the last minute.” As the 1989-90 music season begins, here are five portraits of these key people, the subscribers themselves.

Louise Meyeri Spillman is a chamber orchestra enthusiast. You get a clue if you reach her answering machine, which plays an excerpt from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” violin concertos--adjusted periodically, of course, to reflect the current season.

It is not just any of the myriad “Four Seasons” recordings, either. The soloist is Iona Brown. Spillman says she’ll never forget a performance of those concertos that Brown gave with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in January of 1987, before she became music director of the ensemble.

“I don’t know what it was, but I was just caught up in the whole experience,” Spillman says.

Naturally then, she is looking forward to the coming LACO season. Brown and the orchestra will encore the “Four Seasons” Vivaldi program that is part of the Baroque & Beyond I series to which Spillman and her husband subscribe.

That series, at Ambassador Auditorium, is almost completely sold out on subscription alone. The Vivaldi concert is also part of the Baroque & Beyond II series at the Japan America Theatre, and a third performance is being offered as a non-subscription special event.

Ironically, the Vivaldi program has irritated other enthusiasts. Deborah Rutter, executive director of the orchestra, says that some former subscribers canceled their subscriptions when LACO scheduled the Vivaldi instead of Bach’s “Brandenburg” Concertos, which had become an annual LACO tradition. For the future, Bach and Vivaldi will alternate.

For Spillman though, the orchestra can do no wrong. “I’m particularly attracted to Baroque music,” she says, “and my husband likes some contemporary things,” making the Baroque & Beyond a good match for their interests.

But she also appreciates the orchestra itself, is a big Iona Brown fan, and likes Ambassador Auditorium, both for its convenience to her Glendale home and for its elegance and intimacy. She and her husband attended LACO concerts for years before they began subscribing during the Gerard Schwarz era.

At the same time, there is nothing parochial about her enthusiasm. She attends concerts on other LACO series--she is also a Los Angeles Philharmonic subscriber, and has season tickets for several theaters around town--and ventures into other LACO venues, such as the Wiltern Theatre.

One of the long-term LACO problems has been establishing a presence outside Ambassador Auditorium. The Vivaldi program that Spillman remembers so vividly was also given on series at the Beverly Theatre, the Van Nuys First Baptist Church and UC Riverside.

This season, LACO offers 30 concerts, divied up into six regular series, at four different sites: Ambassador Auditorium, the Wiltern Theatre, Royce Hall and Japan America Theatre. There are also two combination series, and Meet the Music, a group of four hour-long educational morning performances at the Wiltern Theatre.

The Ambassador series are doing well, but “doing an awareness campaign for the Wiltern is a major priority,” Rutter says. The orchestra has already reached or surpassed its subscription goals for four series, and is at about 80% in the other two.

On the other hand, the LACO subscription goals are relatively modest. Last season, only 65% of ticket income came from subscriptions, with single-ticket sales accounting for the rest.

“We’re selling way more single tickets than ever before,” Rutter says. “Single tickets are scary to sell, because you never know how you’re doing until the last minute.”

The reasons for subscriber dissatisfaction are as varied as the causes of enthusiasm. There are always programming reasons, changes in ability to afford the commitment, and convenience of parking and pricing is always a factor, Rutter says.

“The first year that Ambassador charged for parking, we certainly heard about that!” she says.

The various venues and series all have completely different types of audiences. The Japan America subscribers, Rutter says, “are younger, more professional and more arts-oriented. Pasadena tends to be more conservative and less expressive.”

Spillman is one Pasadena veteran, however, who relishes the adventure not only of new artists, but of new music. “We’ve never been disappointed,” she says of her experiences with the Chamber Orchestra. “We’ve always come away, not just enjoying the music, but learning something new.”