American Orchestras Out of the Red, but Still Lack Other Colors

Eight years ago, the music world was in a dither. In 1992, the American Symphony Orchestra League released a report that warned of mounting debts fueled by out-of-control costs: “Unless changes are made in the way orchestras do business . . . the future health of the orchestra industry is in serious jeopardy.”

That report, and another that followed a year later filled with suggestions for change, put orchestras in the spotlight. Jostled off the arts pages onto the front pages, orchestras were getting the kind of headlines they deplore. “Musical Dinosaurs?” asked the Chicago Tribune at a time when three-quarters of American orchestras were posting debts.

Now, the same percentage have balanced books. Some once-troubled groups, such as the renowned St. Louis Symphony, which has just received a record-breaking $40 million grant, have enjoyed unprecedented philanthropic favor. A recession faded, and a national economic boom took fire. The sense of crisis has waned--and with it the sense of urgency to make changes that were once thought necessary for survival.

For many, that means not worrying about a host of problems that seemed critical in 1992, when independent researchers drafted the Wolf Report (for author Thomas Wolf’s Cambridge, Mass.-based consulting group). Along with doom-and-gloom numbers, it offered what amounted to a cultural critique of the orchestra business.

It didn’t make too many people happy.

“How much longer can American orchestras remain all-white, upper class institutions?” it asked. That question was by far the most divisive issue raised, and many top-level orchestra managers felt it wasn’t germane in a discussion of financial issues. But it wouldn’t go away easily.

A year later, the league courted controversy yet again with a second survey, “Americanizing the American Orchestra,” with a discussion of diversity issues, including quotations from prominent black board members and patrons.

“I have never gone to a concert of a major orchestra when I was not conscious of the relative absence of black faces,” said one Detroit Symphony Orchestra board member.

Indeed, in 1989 some Detroit city leaders threatened to withhold money from the orchestra because it had no black members. The group promptly hired what were derided as “token” players, and the crisis passed. But the 1992 report struck a nerve because it connected diversity to financial survival.

The idea that diversity--changing the cultural makeup of orchestras, orchestra leaders and audience members--was of economic concern became almost a mantra among cultural observers. That year, said the New York Times, “conversations with black conductors yield a warning as urgent as it was unanimous: American orchestras will have to focus on the absence of minorities on the podium, on the stage and in the hall, or more ensembles will fold before the century is out.”

“What troubled me was the connection between the two,” says Brent Assink, executive director of the San Francisco Symphony since 1999. “There might be all kinds of reasons to do that, and of course we have to appeal to diverse audiences, but it was portrayed as a panacea.”

When the reports were first released, the orchestra business was definitely hungry for a panacea.

“In 1993, culture in general felt more besieged,” says John Sparks, now a vice president of the Orchestra League. “That was the time of the [National Endowment for the Arts] battles and when music education was disappearing entirely from the schools.”

It was also one year before what he calls “the battle royal,” the rise of Newt Gingrich at the head of a political movement perceived as overtly hostile to the arts. Orchestra leaders were faced not just with decreased public funding but with the broader animus of a newly resurrected Populism inimical to “highbrow” culture.

Orchestra League Under Political Fire

Suddenly, the Orchestra League was fielding shots from the left and the right simultaneously. Conservative critic Samuel Lipman even called for the league’s disbanding, while black symphony-goers began asking when all the proposed changes would actually happen.

Music critics editorialized both for and against broad change. The New York Times’ Edward Rothstein called the league’s self-analysis “a disgrace”; other writers lined up behind the plentiful bromides about accessibility and breaking cultural barriers offered in the “Americanizing” report.

“There was no expectation of the kind of reaction they got,” Sparks says. By 1994, the league was in full retreat. Many of the ideas, like making orchestra halls more accessible, made sense. Others, such as using video displays and lighting effects, were downright loopy. But a planned third stage, in which the league would seek funds to help orchestras make these changes, was quietly dropped. Even today there’s a general sense that the orchestra business doesn’t want to discuss this so fully in public.

Indeed, a spokeswoman for Philadelphia Orchestra President Joseph Kluger said he didn’t even remember the highly controversial documents. Most view the cultural issues raised in the report as food for thought, but not crises. And although orchestra managers still acknowledge the embarrassing lack of black musicians and listeners, the racial divide is slowly being disentangled from other issues that seem more immediately solvable.

Baltimore Symphony President John Gidwitz sees only incremental progress in diversifying the audience, but large strides in changing orchestras’ attitudes.

“As far as audiences are concerned, we’ve seen some increase in participation by the African American community,” Gidwitz says. “But looking at audiences alone is a very narrow definition.” He points to a broad range of educational activities, and the BSO’s frequent collaboration with musicians from Baltimore’s black churches. Like most orchestras responding to the call for change, the BSO has put its resources into efforts, like education, whose results can’t be assessed quickly.

There is frank admission that orchestras are still almost exclusively composed of white and Asian musicians. Insiders blame not orchestras, which generally adhere to a policy of “blind” admissions, but the whole process of music education. Until top conservatories can draw more black students, orchestras will have only a handful of black musicians. And until the quality of music education in urban public schools improves, most conservatories will struggle to find a diverse student body.

Many orchestras have begun to do by habit what in 1993 may have seemed daring, such as searching out works by black composers and rethinking concert start times to attract younger crowds. At the same time, there’s a growing willingness to acknowledge that what they offer will necessarily be marginal in the digital entertainment age.

“The mission of some orchestras may be to involve as much of the community as they can in making music,” says Robert C. Jones, president of the National Symphony Orchestra. “But the mission of a major, fully professional orchestra is to meet the highest aspiration, musically, we can hold for ourselves.”

Resignation to Pop’s Dominance

There’s also greater openness about acknowledging the difficulty of orchestral music. Originally, there was the implicit assumption that just getting new bodies through the door would mean new subscribers; the complexity of classical music was downplayed.

Today, orchestra leaders sound more comfortable living in the vast shadow of popular entertainment.

“Symphony orchestras are very powerful emotional experiences for those who invest the time in the experience, but they don’t yield instant gratification to the casual passerby,” Gidwitz says. “We have to work harder to build our audience, but there’s been a tremendous proliferation of entertainment options. People have developed a very high sense of the visual, and the expectation that experiences will be given in short spaces of time.”

Since the Orchestra League first undertook its survey, its leadership has changed. While the new group doesn’t disavow the reports, it has never followed up on them.

But the disappearance of a conversation that was very heated in 1992 suggests a major if subtle change. The league’s unhappy foray into political correctness now looks like a final spasm of what amounted to cultural peer pressure. Orchestras, elite institutions looking for a safe niche in a democratic society, wanted to “fit in,” to find a Populist niche in which they have the same status as the local sports team.

But most found that there was no easy way to substantially broaden their appeal without changing their very definition, and they were unwilling to do that.

“No museum curator would put a Rubens out in the park so that more people could see it; that’s lunacy,” Jones says. “We can’t let popular culture determine how we fulfill our mission as curators.”