Valley Perspective : The Day the Music Died : If Glendale residents want a symphony, they must support it

You can file the plight of the Glendale Symphony Orchestra under this heading: the high cost of maintaining local cultural excellence.

Glendale city officials are quite familiar with that file. Who could have forgotten the much ballyhooed and subsequently abortive 1994 opening season of the Alex Theatre?

The 1925 Art Deco vaudeville house was bought and renovated by the Glendale Redevelopment Agency at a cost of $6.5 million. In its first season, the Alex lost $277,000. Its manager went bankrupt. Last year, the Alex received a subsidy of $350,000 from the city and the redevelopment agency.

Now, the problem is the orchestra, a venerable, 72-year-old institution that has been referred to as the city’s cultural centerpiece.

The Glendale Symphony is struggling to raise enough funding for an April concert. It has been in such dire straits that its board was recently forced to go before Glendale city officials to plead for help.

“We will be faced with the task of regrouping,” said Paul Kinney, president of the Glendale Symphony board. “We need now to do the soul-searching necessary to discover what form our mission . . . should take.”

This leads to a question: Does Glendale still want its orchestra?

By every funding standard (subscribers, ticket sales, donations), the symphony is in deep trouble.

One could say that the community has already spoken and that the symphony is no longer a local cultural icon. You could say that Glendale city officials have spoken, too, since the $25,000 they grudgingly offered to help is merely an advance on the symphony’s 1997 city funding.

But those interested in maintaining Glendale’s feel as a complete community with its own cultural offerings ought to think seriously about the symphony’s April concert. They ought to attend it. And if the people of Glendale want to pull the plug, they ought to be doubly sure that they are really willing to lose the music.