Ohhhhhhhh, I Get It Now...

So, you may have seen the story in the local media a week or so ago announcing that the Minnesota Orchestra was canceling its annual season-opening concert at the Lake Harriet bandshell in south Minneapolis for lack of funds. In fact, if you live in Minnesota and read a paper, watch local TV news, listen to MPR, or read local news online, you pretty much couldn't have missed it. The story was quite literally everywhere, which surprised me, because honestly, it's one free outdoor concert out of about ten that we do every year, and it's not as if we've been doing it forever, either. (I believe the first time we played the bandshell during my time in Minneapolis was in 2003, Osmo's first season as music director.) Even granting that July is a slow news month, it seemed odd that the story was discovered and picked up by so many media outlets.

Until I realized that we'd sent out a press release about it. Which utterly baffled me. After all, this concert is a month and a half away, and we could easily have just quietly canceled it and let the city of Minneapolis take it off the calendar of events at Lake Harriet, taken it off our calendar, and it might never have hit the papers at all. And considering the way that journalists tend to jump all over any suggestion that an arts group might be in money trouble, wouldn't discretion be the better part of valor here?

It was my editor over at ArtsJournal, Doug McLennan, who pointed out one very good reason for making a big announcement of the cancellation when I asked him what he thought about it: "I know as a reporter that arts organizations that are really in trouble try as long as possible to deny problems, always spinning a rosy glow, often until it's too late to do much about it. The well-managed organization is as transparent as possible about things like this. It signals responsibility, and at the same time tells people 'don't take us for granted'. If I was a member of the community there and a supporter of the orchestra, I'd hear about this and I'd be inclined to pony up some money because I'd be glad the orchestra wasn't waiting until things got bad to take steps to deal with them. And I'd be reminded that running a good orchestra takes support and I'd want to help because I care."

Doug makes an awfully good point, and judging from the reaction of some of our past Lake Harriet audience members on MPR's NewsCut blog, the idea that people would be willing to chip in to help defray the cost of the concert didn't seem so far-fetched. (Speaking of NewsCut, one question that seemed to be coming up quite a bit was: how much can one concert cost, anyway? Especially one in the orchestra's home city! I don't know the exact amount, but it's a lot - we've got literal tons of cargo to haul down there in climate-controlled trucks, massive equipment costs, extra stage crew, ushers, crowd control, and other event staffers. The only thing that doesn't cost extra is the musicians - since we're all salaried employees, we're paid the same whether there's a concert at Lake Harriet or not.)

So anyway, Doug's theory was proven this week, when the folks over at Target (whose world HQ is located conveniently across the street from Orchestra Hall, and who do an awful lot of nice things for us) stepped up and announced that they'd cover the cost of the Lake Harriet concert. So it's back on, which is good news all around. (Although I notice that news isn't yet generating nearly the number of Google hits that the cancellation did.) And the moral of the story for me is: our PR office is probably a lot smarter (and sneakier) than most of us ever give them credit for...