ABOUT THOSE DONUT HOLES

posted by James Reel

    Arts administration consultant Drew McManus maintains a provocative blog called Adaptistration, documenting how orchestra managers are and are not adapting to America’s changing cultural and economic environments. I read it regularly without linking to it because I’ve assumed it might be a bit too specialized for general readers. I’m changing my mind about that, especially now that Drew has had some very nice things to say about what I wrote about the Tucson Symphony in the current Tucson Weekly.
    What’s more important than Drew’s kind words are some points he’s made in an e-mail to me:

    I'm glad to see that you sense there's more behind those ASOL figures than they project because that hunch is dead on. Reportedly, the League is supposed to release some new figures about subscription sales in the near future but whether or not they release the pure data or something through a spin filter is yet to be seen. If I had to bet, I’d go for the latter.
    In the TSO's case I would also point out that their finances have been temporarily boosted by the large salary and work rule concessions from the musicians. That's an artificial revenue enhancer the administration and board will need to fill before they can launch a capital campaign. Whether or not a fundraising timeline set by the board will be acceptable to the players has yet to be seen.
    [TSO executive director Susan] Franano's sense of accomplishment over the 1% of the local community participating in concerts is fairly shocking since the Knight Foundation’s Consumer Segmentation Study (part of their Magic of Music project) determined that, on average, about 4% of any given community participates in live classical music concerts. If you believe that statistic (and I think they did a good job researching it) then Tucson is lagging behind.

    I knew about those concessions from the musicians and meant to write something about that last year, but never got around to it, and completely forgot about it by the time I started the present article. Thanks to Drew for jogging my faulty memory, and for bringing up some other good points.