Symphony Struggling to Find Right Note with Finances, Fans

Ventura County’s New West Symphony, now in its third season, survived a painful birth but still faces serious problems with fund-raising and public support.

The orchestra, created from the merger of ensembles from Ventura and Thousand Oaks in 1995, is winning raves for its music from audience members. But significant challenges lie in the months ahead. Among them:

* Staying solvent. After a good first year, the orchestra’s revenue and assets have dropped dramatically, documents show. New West officials expect to end the year in the black, but do not yet have money in hand for the year’s final pair of concerts in May.

* Controlling expenses. Some in the music community worry the orchestra’s Canadian music director has expensive tastes and note that his last two orchestras, most recently the Ventura County Symphony, folded after running into debt.

* Building audiences. No longer clearly connected to a particular community and depending on many musicians who live in Los Angeles County, the orchestra is still working to establish itself with subscribers.

New West board President William Bang of Thousand Oaks--a retired book and magazine publisher who also is a major donor to the orchestra--is optimistic about its future. Citing Orange County’s Pacific Symphony as a model, he sees the orchestra becoming a major player in the Southern California music world.

“We are the best orchestra between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and people are beginning to understand this symphony is a cultural resource to the region,” Bang said. “But it’s a day-to-day, life-and-death struggle to stay even.”

Patrons, critics and orchestra musicians agree that New West is producing high-quality classical music. The orchestra performs six pairs of concerts per season--each pair consisting of one event at the 1,600-seat Oxnard Performing Arts Center and the other at the 1,800-seat Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. It also plays school concerts throughout the year.

“They have achieved a new level of excellence playing this powerful music and obviously doing it as a cohesive, happy bunch,” said concert-goer Alvin Thompson during intermission at the March 7 concert in Thousand Oaks, featuring music by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. The Thousand Oaks resident and his wife have been season subscribers since the symphony’s inception.

Added Mona Thompson, who has a master’s degree in music education, “There was a negativism surrounding the orchestra the first year, and it showed in the early performances. They are working together as a unit now. I think the conductor has brought them a long way.”

The negativity she referred to was the turmoil caused when the symphony was founded in 1995 through a merger of two smaller symphonies. The Ventura County Symphony, based in Ventura, and the Conejo Symphony Orchestra, based in Thousand Oaks, both were carrying debt and competing for the same contributors, officials said at the time.

It was not, at first, a happy marriage: Not all musicians were invited to join the new orchestra, and longtime community supporters of each municipal orchestra felt they had lost their hometown band.

But sore feelings over the consolidation seem to be fading, according to double-bass player Jeff Bandy, chairman of the orchestra committee, an elected group that serves as a liaison between management and players.

“Morale is good. For the most part, people are getting over it,” Bandy said.

The American Federation of Musicians Local 581 negotiated with New West officials for two years before agreeing on a three-year contract for the new orchestra in October.

New West’s players, numbering between 40 and 65 depending on the program, are all professionals. Although players were glad to have a settlement, some are unhappy with certain provisions.

Players are not getting health benefits, and, unlike in some comparable groups, those with large instruments are not receiving an extra allowance for carting them to rehearsals and performances, Bandy said. The symphony is contributing 2% of musicians’ pay to the union pension fund, although the industry standard for such contributions is 5% to 7%.

Still, the pay is competitive--up to $120 per rehearsal and $150 per concert--and the orchestra sounds incredible, Bandy said.

“It’s a great job. It feels really good to work with that group,” he said. “As long as our fiscal health holds out, we’ll be fine.”

Financial Woes

Bang and other New West officials were reluctant to provide copies of the orchestra’s tax returns, although nonprofit organizations are required by law to make those documents available to the public.

But when asked about details of the tax returns for 1996 and 1997 obtained from the state attorney general’s office, Bang readily discussed the orchestra’s $1.1-million budget.

Among financial facts divulged in the tax returns are figures showing a 45% decline in contributions--a vital source of revenue to the orchestra, which derives only about 40% of its income from ticket sales.

While ticket sales slipped from $361,000 to $351,000, contributions plummeted from $747,000 to $415,000.

Bang said the contribution decline only reflects a big boost given the orchestra in its first year. Founding donors gave $10,000 each, and some corporate donors pitched in big bucks to help launch the symphony, he said.

Records reflecting this season’s finances to date are not available, Bang said, but he is confident the orchestra’s board and volunteers will do well in fund-raising this year.

With two months to go, however, funding is not yet secured for the year’s last pair of concerts scheduled for May 15 and 16.

And the orchestra was forced to cancel plans to play Shostakovich’s score to Eisenstein’s 1925 silent movie classic, “The Battleship Potemkin,” next month after failing to raise the money needed to pay for the large production. The orchestra instead will perform the score to Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights,” requiring a smaller group.

The symphony’s assets also declined sharply from its first year, from $483,000 to $271,000. Bang said the 44% decline resulted in part because the orchestra cashed in $125,000 in securities for expenses.

Assets also declined because the orchestra stopped counting more than $63,000 in unfulfilled donation pledges, he said.

As for box office revenue, it has “come roaring back” in the current season, Bang said. Both March concerts came within 100 tickets of selling out, he said.

Orchestra expenses include administration, venue rental, advertising and salaries. Paychecks for the orchestra’s musicians--amounting to $285,000 last year--make up the lion’s share.

Salary for New West’s founding music director and conductor Boris Brott came in second at $67,000. Bang said pay for players this year will be about the same, and Brott’s salary is in “the high 70s.”

That pay is within the range of salaries reported in a survey of orchestras with budgets of $1 million to $3.5 million, according to a survey conducted by the Assn. of California Symphony Orchestras this year.

The orchestra also pays Brott’s expenses, more than $11,000 in 1997. These include several flights a year from his Canadian home in Hamilton, Ontario, where he runs a summer music festival and also works as a motivational speaker.

Although a healthy budget surplus of $176,000 in 1996 declined to $12,900 in 1997, the orchestra has paid off $230,000 in debts owed by the Conejo and Ventura County symphonies and expects to end 1998 in the black, Bang said.

Key Growth Period

New West is an oddity in the music industry--a new orchestra in an era when many established ensembles around the country are folding.

“The New West Symphony is approaching the most critical growth period in the life of any orchestra,” said Karine Beesley, general manager of the former Ventura County Symphony for seven years and now executive director of the John Anson Ford Theatre Foundation in Los Angeles.

“Orchestras with budgets in the $1-million to $2.5-million range go out of business because they want to be bigger, with better musicians and offering more concerts,” she said.

Beesley said she could not comment on New West Symphony and its operations, but she did work with Brott--whom she characterized as a big spender--for two years when he conducted the Ventura County Symphony.

When it was dissolved, that orchestra showed a $200,000 deficit in its $700,000 budget.

Brott was part of the reason for that deficit, Beesley said. Although the ultimate responsibility for an orchestra’s financial health lies with its board of directors, the board didn’t say no to Brott’s demands, she said.

“Boris liked to have things done in a fairly elaborate way,” she said, describing how Brott talked the board into spending $25,000 to $30,000 to construct a stage extension over the first three rows of seats in the Oxnard Performing Arts Center, the symphony’s venue.

Other examples Beesley cited were Brott’s insistence on hiring only the finest--and costliest--musicians when substitute players were needed.

Brott responded that he doesn’t spend money, he proposes programs--which the board either approves or rejects.

The stage extension was necessary to improve acoustics and bring the orchestra “into the same room” with the audience, he said. And using fine players means having a fine orchestra, necessary to attract larger audiences, he said.

But Beesley is not alone in her assertions that Brott runs up big bills. Although most of the maestro’s detractors are musicians who lost jobs in the merger, some are former administrators and board members. Aside from Beesley, however, none was willing to be quoted by name.

“No one is better at promoting classical music than Boris Brott,” said one musician. “He is absolutely gifted in getting people to support an orchestra, but he does run up mondo bills.”

Brott’s propensity for spending money was cited by critics back home in Hamilton, where he led the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra for 21 years before coming to Ventura County in 1990. Five years later, the 113-year-old orchestra went bankrupt with a $1.2-million debt.

Brott supporters say the orchestra folded because he left it, not because he drove it into debt. Without Brott leading the fund-raising charge, donations dwindled, they say.

John Nolan, a former member of the Hamilton orchestra board of directors, said Brott was not responsible for the orchestra’s debt.

“Like any artistic person, if you give him an unlimited budget, you do so at your own peril,” said Nolan, a lawyer. “If you have a board of rich, philanthropic little old ladies who are charmed by Boris, watch out, the sky’s the limit. But if they are hard-nosed, financially responsible people who say ‘Stay within this budget,’ Boris can do that.”

Susan Feller, who served as New West’s executive director its first year, said she could not comment on the current fiscal health of the symphony. But she did acknowledge that Brott has ambitious plans for the organization that require funding to support them.

“When you have an artistic vision equal to Boris’, it is extensive?? because he wants a world-class orchestra, but it’s a building process, and organizations should never spend money they don’t have,” she said.

“An orchestra loses money every time it plays a concert. It’s the only business where the harder you work, the more money you lose,” said Feller, now president of the Ventura County Arts Council.

New West Symphony seems to be doing all the right things to ensure success, said Grace Chang, public relations manager for the American Symphony Orchestra League in Washington, D.C.

For one, it has extensive outreach programs that bring music education to area schools. This is important because funding for the arts in public schools has been cut.

“Orchestras with education programs are stepping in to fill that niche,” she said. “Communities appreciate that.”

And goodwill usually translates into financial support.

As part of the Symphonic Adventures program, New West Symphony offers concerts for 10,000 third-, fourth- and fifth-graders across the county. Smaller ensembles go into schools, playing for students in kindergarten through high school.

The New West Youth Symphony Orchestra offers high school students opportunities to play in beginning, intermediate and advanced ensembles. Exceptional student musicians play, backed by the full New West orchestra, in the Discovery Artists concert program.

From a practical standpoint, educating young listeners is essential to creating future audiences, according to Jeth Mill, executive director of the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra in Nebraska.

Increasing youth education programs was a priority when the Lincoln orchestra was created from a merger five years ago, Mill said.

Mill described the same kind of merger troubles experienced by New West: community uproar, bruised egos on both boards, ousted musicians and the continuing push to find funding.

But after five years, the organization is “finally achieving alignment” among various parties, he said, predicting New West will eventually iron out its wrinkles too.

Mill related a story of another merged orchestra he worked with in Pennsylvania. Today, 25 years after it formed, there is still some “residue of loyalty to the predecessor organizations,” he said.

“Merging makes sense on a logical basis, but on an emotional level there are too many attachments to these cultural institutions,” Mill said. “That makes the transition difficult.”

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FYI (VENTURA COUNTY EDITION)

New West Symphony’s next pair of concerts will feature performance of the score to Charlie Chaplin’s 1931 movie “City Lights,” along with a showing of the film. Performances will be April 23 in Oxnard. Tickets cost $12 to $55. Information and tickets: 497-5800