San Diego Symphony Ended Season $900,000 in Debt

The San Diego Symphony was $900,00 in debt when it closed its books on the 1992 fiscal year Wednesday, executive director Wesley Brustad said Friday.

Revenue for the just completed 1991-92 symphony season, budgeted at $7.74 million for both winter and summer programming, was down 11%. Although ticket revenues were down only 3.2%, contributed income from private sources was down 13%. This is the first time since the orchestra’s fiscal crisis of 1986 and canceled 1986-87 season that Brustad has not submitted a balanced budget at the end of a fiscal year.

The threatened loss of 15% of the symphony’s transient occupancy tax (TOT) funding for the coming year may be the last straw. If the San Diego City Council accepts the city manager’s proposed across-the-board cut in arts organization funding, the symphony will lose another $79,876.

“The California Arts Council cut us by 15%, and now they want to drop another $80,000 from city funding. All of these 15% cuts might just kill us,” Brustad said.

Brustad said that the new season, which opened Friday night, would continue, but steps to resolve the current financial crisis are being formulated by members of the orchestra committee, the board’s executive committee and the executive director.

“At the end end of August, I let everyone in the symphony family in on the impending financial problems. We are analyzing them now and should have a plan within the month,” Brustad said.

The budget for San Diego Opera’s 1992-93 season also stands to lose more than $73,000 in TOT funds, compared to last year, if the 15% reduction is passed. General director Ian Campbell pointed out that such a figure is equal to the total cost of the singers in the upcoming production of Bizet’s “Les Pecheurs de Perles” or two-thirds of the orchestra for the season-opening production of Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia.” Campbell was not about to eliminate either item.

“We either have to trim $73,000 from the budget or find an equal amount in additional contributions. And we’ve just gone through a line-by-line trim of all the budgets through 1996, so trimming is not a likely solution,” Campbell said, adding that he will have to turn to individual donors for increased support and attempt to increase ticket sales.

He noted that 78% of the company’s contributed income comes from individual donors, as opposed to foundations and corporations. This high percentage is unequaled by any other U.S. opera company, which is in part a tribute to San Diego donors, but also reflects the small numbers of potential corporate donors in the area. And ticket sales for this season are already budgeted at selling 91% of the house, a significant increase from last season’s actual 88% overall attendance.

“We will have to turn to our donor base, which is extremely loyal, but they are also feeling the pressures of the sluggish economy.”

Campbell protested that the proposed 15% TOT reduction unfairly targets local arts organizations. For example, the suggested reduction of TOT funding for the San Diego Convention and Visitor’s Bureau is only 4%.

“Those of us in the arts community know that these are tough times, but we do ask for equity. To single us out for meat-ax cuts while others get a gentle surgeon’s knife simply isn’t fair.”

La Jolla Chamber Music Society executive director Neale Perl noted that his organization had already absorbed a 50% funding cut this year from the California Arts Council, so the impending TOT cut only follows the trend.

In June, the San Diego City Council tentatively approved a 17% increase for the chamber music society (from $47,852 in 1992 to $56,369 in 1993) an increase which allowed the society to expand its educational outreach program into the local schools. This year Perl estimates that the young performers of the society’s discovery series (student performances and lecture demonstrations) will reach about 4,000 students, up from 3,000 last year.

Perl said the society would not automatically cut back this educational outreach but finding more private funds to compensate for the loss of public money would not be easy.

“There are only so many sources to go to, and I’m not aware of any sources that we have not already tapped for support,” Perl said.

The irony of the TOT cutbacks, Perl noted, is that the chamber music society, like other music organizations, has expanded its educational outreach in response to the continuing cutbacks in music education in the public schools.

“If they cut us, we cannot make up for the loss of music in the schools.”

For San Diego Comic Opera, any loss of TOT money must be made up with intensified fund-raising, according to managing director Terry Switzer. The company received $21,200 last year, and with the proposed cut would receive only $17,433.

“We have no fat to cut out of anything--we operate on a shoestring. And we cannot slip back in the quality of our productions because it is the gradual improvement of our product that has brought back the disappointed patrons we lost in previous years. We can’t afford to lose them.”

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Percussion pastime. Shoppers at Horton Plaza are accustomed to a variety of performers holding forth on the second level sports deck, but Pat Pfiffner’s Ragtime Redhots regularly turns heads when it performs there. Carol Pelkner and Todd Brysun complete his percussion trio of one xylophone and two marimbas. Watching the trio’s flying mallets is as engaging as listening to this upbeat repertory of highly syncopated rags from Scott Joplin to Harry Breuer.

Because most ragtime music was written for either piano or dance band, Pfiffner, who is percussionist with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra, does all of his own arranging. The xylophone, which has a more percussive sound, usually takes the melody, and the more mellow marimbas accompany.

Pfiffner explained that he borrowed the idea for the Ragtime Redhots from a percussion group on the East Coast called Nexus, which specializes in the music of Hamilton Greene, a virtuoso xylophonist of the 1920s. In addition to classic rags, Pfiffner has found a distinctive local source for music for his ensemble.

“The Heritage Band Society in Balboa Park has a great collection of salon orchestra music from the Elmer Ruth collection. Ruth was the the preeminent band leader here before World War II. This music is a ball to play, but it’s very demanding.”

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Lunchtime serenade. There may be no free lunch, but free noon-hour concerts at the Lyceum Theatre in Horton Plaza resume Monday when San Diego’s Classic Brass ensemble opens the San Diego Mini-Concert’s new season.

The hourlong mini-concerts are given on alternate Mondays, and patrons are invited to eat their lunch while enjoying the music. (It may be, however, a thoughtful decision for mini-concert patrons to forgo tasty, but crunchy, potato chips as they plan their brown-bag menus.) The Oct. 19 program will feature La Chanterelle III, a Baroque trio from Los Angeles.

CRITIC’S CHOICE / YUCATAN WARM-UP

For those who are not flying to the Yucatan to hear the San Diego Symphony perform at the Chichen Itza archeological site, the next best thing is to hear the preview concert at 8 p.m. Friday in Copley Symphony Hall.

Music Director Yoav Talmi will conduct the orchestra in Verdi’s Overture to “I Vespri Siciliani,” Stravinsky’s “Firebird” Suite, Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and Silvestre Revueltas’ exotic “La Noche de los Mayas.”

The San Diego Symphony League is sponsoring a preconcert reception at 7 p.m. that will include a display of Mayan art and artifacts on loan from the San Diego Museum of Man and the collection of Tamara Glick.