No Such Thing As Halfway

In the five months since Sarah and I began writing this blog, I've refrained from commenting in any sort of specific way on the internal crises that all too frequently plague American orchestras these days. My reasons for remaining silent are twofold: first, I think that the issues and problems surrounding the proper care and feeding of major arts organizations are in general far too complicated to be unraveled in a blog setting.

Second, and more to the point, I'm a professional orchestral musician, which gives me a vested interest in any battle between musicians and orchestra managements, and yet I'm posting to a blog hosted by the official website of the Minnesota Orchestra. (See here for our official policy on what gets written in this space.) No one in our management has ever told me or Sarah what we can and cannot write, but it would obviously put everyone in a bad situation if we were to start tossing bombs around in our own house. (I'm also in no position to speak for my colleagues here in Minneapolis, so I try to be careful not to use this blog in a way that would give anyone the impression that I'm representing anything more than my own views.)

All that having been said, there are events currently unfolding at Ohio's Columbus Symphony that I think are worth getting into, in the most general possible way. Basically, the CSO, which has a long and venerable history among mid-tier American orchestras (for an Upper Midwest comparison, think of it as being somewhat comparable to the Milwaukee Symphony,) is facing a financial crunch which apparently has its management and board stymied.

Those in charge of the organization have become convinced that the orchestra simply isn't sustainable in its present form, and have announced a plan to "save" the ensemble by laying off 22 full-time musicians and slashing 12 weeks off the current 46-week season. If the plan is implemented, the orchestra would have 31 musicians remaining in its ranks. Presumably, it would continue to call itself the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, despite the fact that it would employ fewer musicians than the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. (For comparison, the Minnesota Orchestra's full complement is 98 musicians, including 3 librarians, and we are one of 18 American orchestras that pays its musicians year-round.)

Now, I'm not closely connected to the situation in Columbus, and I wouldn't presume to speculate on whether the city can afford to sustain its orchestra (although it's worth noting that the CSO musicians believe fervently that it can.) The state of Ohio is home to two major orchestras (Cleveland and Cincinnati) despite also being home to some seriously depressed economic circumstances. Columbus, despite being large, is basically a huge college town, which makes its economic calculus different from a city built on industry or finance. So I'm not going to stand here and declare that I know the truth about Columbus from 750 miles away.

But on the most general level, I've just never understood it when executives and board members of arts organizations propose to save their companies by slashing them beyond recognition. Orchestras are particularly inflexible in this regard, because they really only come in two sizes: symphonic, and chamber. Symphonic orchestras only work if they look and sound like orchestras, so proposing to serve your local public with a "symphonic orchestra" of 31 players is not only odd, it's making a fairly large assumption about what sort of hogwash your public is going to be willing to buy into.

Consider it from another angle: let's say that the Minnesota Timberwolves, plagued for years by slumping ticket sales, underperforming teams, and a deeply unpopular general manager, decided that they just could no longer compete in the hockey-mad winter sports marketplace of Minneapolis/St. Paul. But rather than move the team, or fold completely, or sell to a new local owner who could try to succeed where others had failed, let's say that the team announced that it would be laying off five of its twelve players, and playing only 65 games per season, rather than the customary 82. (They'll keep the unpopular GM on, of course, just like in real life.)

You know, of course, what would happen. This plan would be a non-starter, both with fans and with the NBA, because basketball teams have twelve players and play 82 games. That's just what they do. I suppose you could own a team with seven players and play 65 games, but the Boston Celtics are not going to show up to play you, and your local fan base is certainly not going to shell out $50-$200 a ticket to watch your little experiment.

Now, orchestras are a bit more flexible than that: there are successful symphony orchestras in this country with as few as fifty full-time musicians - they just have to bulk up with a lot of extra players if they want to do something like a Mahler symphony. But there really is a limit to how far you can pare down the ensemble and still call it an orchestra and expect people to pay for it.

The reality is that not all cities are equal, either in terms of their relative wealth, or in the needs and desires of the populace. The Seattle area is comparable in size to the Twin Cities, yet it lacks an NHL hockey team, and it doesn't have a theatre company with anything like the budget and national profile of the Guthrie. Minneapolis and St. Paul are renowned for our embrace of arts and culture, yet we don't have a single full-time large scale ballet company. Phoenix is the sixth-largest city in America (soon to be the fifth,) yet its symphony orchestra pays a base salary that's in the neighborhood of that earned by orchestra musicians in Birmingham and Kansas City.

Cities and their residents have to set priorities and make decisions, is what I'm trying to say in my typically long-winded, roundabout way. Not every city is going to be able to boast of having every conceivable entertainment and amenity. So there shouldn't have to be a lot of civic shame if a populace decides that it just doesn't want to spend millions every year to sustain a specific sports team or cultural group. But trying to keep such an organization floating on the cheap, as a shadow of what it ought to be, strikes me as taking your citizenry for a long walk off a short pier and asking them to pay for it.

Again, let me stress: this isn't really about the Columbus Symphony. I'm just using their situation as a catalyst for a larger discussion, because this is hardly the first time that an American orchestra has proposed a cost-saving scheme like this, and it surely won't be the last. Orchestras are big, expensive, unwieldy beasts, even by non-profit arts standards, and they're an absolute bear to manage, fund, and maintain. In tough economic times, some are bound to be unable to sustain themselves, and while that's sad, it is the way of things.

I just don't think we ought to be lowering expectations, either of what cultural institutions can be, or of just how much work it takes to create and sustain them. If you want an orchestra, by all means, have an orchestra. If you want a basketball team, have a basketball team. But don't organize a 5K race and then try to tell everyone you're hosting the Olympics. People aren't that stupid.