Good lord—tragically hip UA assitant prof Charlie Bertsch and my old-school-feminist wife are both cited as experts on How to Read a Book in the same Arizona Daily Star article. Can you guess which one is the goth and which has the tattoos?
In the latest Tucson Weekly, I interview Kate Fisher in anticipation of her performance here in the touring production of Little Women. I thought she was absolutely perfect when she starred in Arizona Theatre Company’s version of My Fair Lady a few years ago, and she’ll no doubt make a fine impression in her current gig, if she can avoid being upstaged by Maureen McGovern (who has never struck me as a spotlight hog, anyway).
It’s de rigeur for these touring performers to say “I’m really looking forward to coming/returning to Tucson,” but in Kate Fisher’s case I’m certain she meant it. She spoke with pleasure about the various places she visited during her ATC stint, and grilled me on what she should do during her short stay here next week.
She also urged me, as they all do, to come see her show. I think I’ll pass on this one; Invisible Theatre is opening the same night, and I’ll have to review that for the Weekly, whereas Little Women would be long gone by the time I got a review of it into the paper. Besides, from the snippets I’ve heard online and the reviews I’ve read, the score would surely annoy me. It seems to be just one more of those anonymous pop-hack jobs rampant on Broadway these days … melodies without distinctive contours, music without personality.
Critics don’t much care for this show, but audiences seem to respond to it. I wish Kate Fisher well in Little Women; here’s hoping the tour will give her the national exposure she so deserves.
Introducing a flute concerto by Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, just now, I mentioned that it wasn’t so unusual for a head of state to play an instrument; Nixon had the piano, and Clinton had the saxophone. I suppose I could have made a naughty double entendre by alluding to Clinton’s “instrument,” and suggested that George W. Bush’s instrument is his Texas chainsaw, but why antagonize people on the air? That’s what the Internet is for.
If I sound a little tired today, it’s because I stayed up past my bedtime last night attending one of the three board meetings we directors of the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music hold every year. After coming away from those meetings, I’m always a little elated and wonder why everybody else is whining about the sorry state of classical music in America.
We’re about to begin our 58th season. We present a combination of major ensembles and emerging artists, usually to near-capacity houses (there’s a long waiting list for season tickets to our main series). We present strictly classical music, not jazz or world music or the other genres that organizations like the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival feel are necessary to draw a more diverse audience. Besides the standard Beethoven and Brahms, we have something unusual, preferably recent, on almost every concert, and indeed we commission one to three substantial new works every season. The audience is more than willing to give these new pieces a try, and premieres are often met with standing ovations. In the past 15 years we have added two series to our offerings, including an ambitious week-long festival in March featuring A-list musicians. We also organize outreach programs for kids.
We do all this with a balanced budget, and a cash reserve to cover unexpected expenses and the rare shortfall, like the season after 9/11 when our investment portfolio lost $150,000 and we spent $30,000 more than we brought in. We covered that easily with our savings, and we have since built the funds back almost to where they had been. During the first nine months of this year we also raised contributions and pledges totalling $500,000 for an endowment fund.
And this is all done by rank amateurs. We pay a pittance to one person for part-time work handling the box office, mailings and billings, and we have a professional musician—cellist Peter Rejto—serving as artistic director of the one-week festival. We also paid a consultant to tell us how to operate the endowment campaign. Otherwise, every detail—artistic, administrative, logistic—is handled by our board of physicians, accountants, professors, scientists, financial planners, social workers, travel agents and whatever I count as. (And despite the prevalance of white collars, we are not scions of high society.)
So if we amateurs, in a weak economy, can maintain a strong audience for a financially stable organization specializing in a not particularly popular subcategory (chamber) of a not particularly popular genre of music (classical), what’s wrong with the orchestras and opera companies that are run by professionals with degrees in arts administration and who carry the seal of approval of groups like the American Symphony Orchestra League? Why are organizations that present music with theoretically greater audience appeal than ours losing subscribers, hemorrhaging money, seeing their public credibility evaporate, clamoring for government bailouts and, too often, going belly-up?
Is it because they waste tens of thousands of dollars on studies that tell them things they ought to be able to figure out for themselves? Is it because their administrative staffs are bloated and their non-artistic expenses are out of control? Is it because their managers have taken refuge in the non-profit sector because they’re too incompetent to survive in the real world?
Chris Casacchia has an article in the Phoenix Business Journal celebrating the second consecutive year in which the Phoenix Symphony has—miracle of miracles—balanced its budget. (Use the MSNBC link to avoid the nuisance registration procedure at the Business Journal’s own site.) But, as usual with coverage of the arts biz, the article omits some important context and analysis.
First, a blatant error: Casacchia writes that “the West’s sixth-largest orchestra has been operating in the red for 15 of its 22 years in existence.” Well, the Phoenix Symphony was founded in 1947, a bit more than 22 years ago. Later, Casacchia fudges by mentioning the orchestra’s “professional inception in 1983.” The orchestra had long been “professional”; its music director in the mid 1970s was none other than Eduardo Mata, who even then wouldn’t have wasted his time on an amateur group. What happened in 1983 is that it went full-time, with musicians receiving contracts that extended through most of the year, accompanied by salaries they could almost live on without also having to teach or wait tables.
That was the orchestra’s near-fatal error. It vastly expanded its season without simultaneously—or previously—expanding its audience and funding base. The orchestra suddenly played to what looked like half-empty houses, and entered a long period of chronic financial crisis.
Things apparently began turning around in the 1990s, but the red ink was flowing again in the years following 9/11. (Arts organizations blame terrorist-inspired audience timidity and donor trepidation for their recent problems, but the troubles usually have more to do with inept managaement.) The orchestra stayed in business only through years of suckling a $1 million line of credit from Wells Fargo and bleeding its endowment fund (which is now half what it once was, $5.5 million gone and hard to replace). But now, glory be, the Phoenix Symphony has balanced its budget of a bit more than $9 million, of which ticket revenues cover about 40 percent, according to Casacchia.
Reports Casacchia, “During the 2004-05 season, contributions increased to $5.4 million, surpassing the prior year by nearly 14 percent. In addition, the subscription sales record of $1.9 million that was hit during fiscal 2004 already has been eclipsed for fiscal 2006, which began July 1.”
OK, but what I’d like to know is if this has happened because the orchestra is attracting significantly more subscribers, or if it hit this mark mainly by raising ticket prices. The article should tell us that.
What the article does tell us is something rather troubling if we, unlike the reporter, connect the dots. Here’s one important point: “But thanks to a gift of $329,000 from the city, increased fundraising efforts and sales revenue, the symphony balanced the budget.” We’re talking bailout, baby; the Phoenix city government awarded the orchestra a nice chunk of change—as it did Arizona Opera this past season—to help pull it out of the hole. This is “crutch” income the organization can’t expect in future seasons.
And how about this detail: Casacchia reports that contributions by the board of directors increased during the 2003-04 season from $230,000 to $430,000. Right now, board donations are more like $1 million. Fine and dandy, except for one troubling point: This ballooning support is coming from insiders, not the public. If the sugar daddies on the board eventually tap themselves out, or are replaced by less generous donors, the orchestra will find itself in trouble again.
So, this is good news? Only if you’re repeating management spin and not doing much true reporting and analysis. But that’s standard operating procedure among today’s lazy journalists.
In case you assume I fritter away the day working on sodoku puzzles, here, in no particular order, are the things I need to do before crawling into bed tonight at 9:
Edit two art-related articles by Margaret Regan for the next edition of the Tucson Weekly.
Figure out a mutually agreeable day and time to interview Gidon Kremer about his new recording of Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin.
Finish compiling the index for Nathan F. Sayre’s new book, Working Wilderness: The Malpai Borderlands Group and the Future of the Western Range, forthcoming from Rio Nuevo Publishers.
Complete the research for an article I’m writing about Leopold Mozart’s 1756 treatise on violin playing.
Write an article about a real estate investment firm for a supplement to be stuffed into Inside Tucson Business.
Get members of the Ciompi and Lindsay quartets to commit to interviews for an article I’m writing on the first string quartet of Nathaniel Stookey.
Set up a day and time to give technical advice to a friend who’s writing a biography of Ethel Merman (“Irving Berlin tailored the songs in Annie Get Your Gun to Ethel’s voice by making them loud.”)
Either take a 30-minute nap or guzzle some Red Bull to fortify myself for the afternoon.
* Put on my Arizona Friends of Chamber Music cap and talk to a co-owner of the local Steinway Gallery about a piano we're thinking about buying.
Put off exercise and cello practice to another day.
Finish my air shift, doing each break as if the only thing on my mind were sitting down with you to share some wonderful music.
* Avoid distracting myself with thoughts of things I’ll have to do tomorrow.
James Reel's cranky consideration of the fine arts and public radio in Tucson and beyond.
