Orchestra is digging out
A “recovery plan” that the Pasadena Symphony Assn. announced this week aims to fill its financial hole by fall 2010.
Among the strategies: using popular composers and titles to boost revenue for classical concerts at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, cutting salaries for the organization’s staff and two music directors, reducing the number of performances in the coming Pasadena Pops season from 12 to eight and switching the pops venue in 2010 from Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge to a grassy field outside the Rose Bowl that will accommodate larger audiences.
If all goes well, says Chief Executive Paul Jan Zdunek, the organization will end next season with a balanced $3.2-million budget, while gradually paying off $800,000 in debt. The plan calls for leaving the $5-million endowment untouched so it can potentially grow and be held in reserve to meet specific future needs.
Even without the national financial meltdown, the orchestras would have run into trouble, according to the recovery plan, because they “were living beyond their financial means.” The orchestras failed to reap savings following a 2007 merger between the previously autonomous Pasadena Symphony and Pasadena Pops.
It wasn’t a case of one orchestra being a financial drag on the other, the plan said: “The results show an equal loss.”
Encouraged by strong attendance for the three most recent concerts, which Zdunek says drew 2,600 to 2,700 listeners to the 2,900-seat Pasadena Civic, the Pasadena Symphony will offer proven hits next season: Holtz’s “The Planets” and Debussy’s “Nocturnes” (Oct. 24), Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky piano concertos with soloist Howard Shelley (Jan. 16), Mozart’s “Requiem” and Berlioz’s “The Nights of Summer” (March 20), Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony and works by Dvorak, Bartok and Rodrigo (April 10), and a program of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Violin Concerto and Fifth Symphony (May 15).
Adult tickets will range from $25 to $75 (compared with $30 and $60 this season), with $10 tickets for concertgoers under 17, and season subscriptions priced at $30 for students.
After performing a free concert Sunday evening outside Pasadena City Hall, the Pasadena Pops will offer four monthly programs at Descanso Gardens, with two performances of each program instead of the originally scheduled three.
In the past, attendance at the pops concerts has averaged about 3,200 for each weekend bracket of three concerts, Zdunek said; next year’s move to the Rose Bowl will allow it to play to as many people -- or more -- in half as many performances. Financial terms for using the city-owned property haven’t been worked out, he said, but “the city is making it easy for us; it’s a new venture and they are willing to help us be successful.”
Zdunek, recruited late last year after the organization fell into fiscal trouble, cutting staff and canceling several concerts, said that he and the two other highest-ranking employees, symphony music director Jorge Mester and pops music director Rachael Worby, took 10% pay cuts that went into effect May 1. The remaining full-time staff of 10 received 5% cuts. Contract negotiations with the orchestras’ musicians are expected to begin soon; Zdunek wouldn’t say whether management will ask them to accept cuts as well.
With the recovery plan in place, the symphony will step up fundraising, with a target of $1.6 million in donations in the next fiscal year.
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