Columbus' orchestra may be silenced, but Toledo Symphony plays on
By SALLY VALLONGO
BLADE STAFF WRITER
As the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle filled on May 9, shortly before the final Classics Series concert of the season, anticipation of the music to come — pianist William Wolfram, a Toledo favorite, plus principal conductor Stefan Sanderling — was tempered by sobering news from Columbus.
The Columbus Symphony Orchestra, the premiere arts organization in Ohio’s capital, was about to become history.
Or so it seemed at the time.
After three seasons of serious budget deficits, a projected loss of more than $3 million for the 2008-09 program, and an April 25 rejection by symphony musicians of 20 to 30 percent cuts to staffing, salary, and benefits, officials had made the decision to cancel several summer pops concert series.
It was all downhill from there.
CSO board chairman Buzz Trafford announced the organization would be out of money by the end of May. Within a few days, the entire new season had been canceled and CSO offices were slated to close as of today unless a last-minute agreement is reached.
Despite offers by the musicians to negotiate a 6.5 percent pay cut and a reduction
in forces, orchestra management proceeded with their plans to dismantle the 57-year-old orchestra.
“At the end of the day, people have to understand that we’ve got a huge dinosaur
here that has to be fed 500 bales of hay a day,” said Tony Beadle, who had come to
Columbus in 2006 from the Boston Pops to serve as the symphony’s executive director.
Dinosaur? The comparison causes Toledo Symphony resident conductor Chelsea
Tipton II to wince. Dinosaur implies outdated, overgrown, inflexible - qualities that work against the success of any arts group, anywhere.
A combination of solid endowments, local support, and effective fiscal management have kept Toledo's symphony in solid shape financially and in no danger of the kind of meltdown Columbus is suffering.
"I've been with the Toledo Symphony for six years. This orchestra has a good spirit and good players who understand the importance of community outreach and relationships," he said.
'Sad commentary'
There are more similarities than differences between the Toledo and Columbus symphonies.
• Both retain 50-plus professional musicians whose primary job is performing in concerts from classical series to pops and small ensembles.
• Both manage an industry standard 38-week season, although Toledo offers more diversity of performance styles than Columbus, with Mozart and More, the Blade Chamber Series, and many, many regional concerts. Both groups also support summer pops series.
• Both pay their full-time musicians salaries. Columbus salaries average about $60,000 a year, but top players earn more than $100,000. Toledo salaries average much less - from a minimum of $25,700 to $32,000 for principals. Only a few Toledo musicians reach the six-figure mark.
• Toledo's orchestra runs on an annual budget of $6 million. The Columbus Symphony Orchestra budget this year was $13 million. The proposed budget for next year was between $9 and $11 million.
• Columbus received $261,417 from the Greater Columbus Arts Council this season, although the group announced it was cutting off the CSO after news of its demise. Toledo receives very little local government funding, although it did receive a Mellon Foundation grant in 2003 to improve internal and external communications.
• Both orchestras also supply musicians for local opera and ballet productions.
Toledo Symphony president Bob Bell said he hopes the problems in Columbus don't have any impact in Toledo.
"I think it's an unfortunate comment on our industry, when this happens, a sad commentary on the struggle communities go through to maintain something as vital as we believe an orchestra to be."
Toledo has never come close to losing its orchestra, he noted. "We've had deficits but none as large as that in Columbus."
But many a city's orchestra has experienced serious financial troubles - the tally includes Detroit, Pittsburgh, Nashville, and Newark.
And in the last decade or so, the Florida and the Tulsa Philharmonics, the Savannah Symphony Orchestra, and symphonies in Colorado Springs in Colorado and San Jose (Calif.) have gone extinct.
None were newcomers; one was more than a century old, and Tulsa's orchestra was almost the same age as the Columbus ensemble: 53 years.
Long-term effects
Tipton was associate conductor in Savannah when that orchestra went out of business.
"I'm not sure the community realizes the impact that has," he said. Not only are concerts canceled and musicians unemployed, but the next generation of musicians is afflicted.
"By not having the symphony as sponsor and source of support, the youth orchestra ceases to exist. Then what are their kids going to do?" Tipton asked. In Savannah, he said, the youth orchestra was canceled a few weeks after the symphony closed.
Like Toledo's symphony, which marks its 65th season of continual music in 2008-2009, the capital city orchestra was the product of visionary community activists who formed the Columbus Little Symphony in 1951 out of the remnants of an earlier group.
Also like Toledo (and most of this country's orchestras at some time in their past) the Columbus Symphony Orchestra began as a per-service group. Instead of a core of dedicated players, the orchestras comprised freelance musicians hired and paid per service for rehearsals and concerts. Both groups have evolved into more permanent status in the late 20th century.
The bottom line
Establishing a core orchestra means securing enough funding to guarantee a living wage to musicians. Development leaders tap industry and private donors, creating endowed chairs. Columbus lists nine endowed chairs on its roster; Toledo has 14 such positions covering nearly every section except double bass.
Professionals earn their wages in rehearsals and concerts as well as special events, including regional and educational performances, and in smaller ensembles. Most also teach privately and many maintain solo and ensemble performing schedules in out-of-town venues as well as substituting for musicians in other orchestras on occasion.
As such, a professional musician's schedule, while not the 9 to 5, Monday-Friday routine that can add up to a minimum 2,000 hours a year for the typical American worker, tends to cluster around evenings and weekends, including holidays, typically in one or more two to three-hour bursts of high-energy performances per day. Musicians are not paid for private practice, although two to three hours daily is not unusual for an individual player.
In January, the Columbus board ordered a 40 percent annual salary cut from all musicians, with no restoration in additional years. In addition to now earning a minimum of $33,000, musicians also would pick up more of their health insurance premiums. The number of full-time musicians was to be slashed by 22; the season would be shortened, and the wage for those who became part-time musicians would go from $150 to $100 per service.
The sum total of these cuts was to save the CSO $1.4 million next season - not even half the projected deficit.
Ohio's capital band, which had celebrated its 50th anniversary with a concert in Carnegie Hall in 2001 and had released commercial recordings, was heading backward, double time.
A few days later, countermeasures were in place trying to prevent the CSO's demise.
A major anonymous gift guaranteed payroll through May 31. High class "rent parties" were pulling in additional funds to meet the current shortfall. Community activists were coming forward with alternate funding plans, many of which called on the board to examine the entire CSO operation for savings. Negotiations between the board and the musicians' organization were reopened, with $500,000 in cost-cutting options offered by the musicians.
Toledo 'blessed'
But money seems to be only an expression of a deeper level of musical discord in Franklin County.
Alan Taplin, longtime Toledo Symphony horn player and head of the musicians' association, said, "The culture of some organizations is really not very cooperative. Some seem unable to communicate between the board and the players."
"You'd think, with time even if just for your own self-interest you would learn how to communicate," said Taplin, who has bachelor's and master's degrees in horn from the University of Michigan and teaches at the University of Toledo and Hillsdale College.
On managing on a much smaller budget, albeit presenting the same number of concerts each season in Toledo as the CSO does in the state capital, Bell said simply, "We're blessed with engaged and caring trustees. We have musicians who are informed and who have shown restraint in labor negotiations."
The symphony has gone five years with no budget increase, Bell noted. Fund-raising continues to supply money, especially necessary in the face of nearly disappearing public funds. "We've tried to create and maintain an environment where we share the problems," he said.
Agreeing, Taplin said, "If we ever found ourselves in dire straits, I can see it would be discussed at length with all the players."
Tipton said coming from Savannah to Toledo gave him a new lease on his musical life.
"I came into this job with hurt feelings. I was disillusioned with the music business. But this job in Toledo has really reinvigorated my passion."
And, he added, "If I had to distill everything about the success or failure of an arts organization, it boils down to trust. Somewhere that's been broken. Once that's broken it's hard to get it back."
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Contact Sally Vallongo at: svallongo@theblade.com.
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