Dorothy Gale, Meet Catch-22

This past Thursday, we played the first concert in our Sounds of Cinema festival, which consists primarily of the orchestra playing complete classic film scores while the films play on a huge screen behind us and the audience (hopefully) marvels at the power of live music when applied to a prerecorded movie.

But that opening concert, which featured The Wizard of Oz, earned us a decided pan from Star Tribune critic Graydon Royce, and his review brings up a broader issue that I want to get into. Before I do, though, I want to say from the outset that I found Graydon's review to be a near-perfect model of how to criticize a performance without being a jerk about it. His assessment was specific in its critique, consistent in its focus, and notable for its lack of a single ounce of vitriol or smugness. He thought the concert was a noble experiment that partially failed, and he said so, which is his job. I've got no complaints.

So, what was it that Graydon thought didn't work about our collaboration with Judy Garland and the Munchkins? Well, here's the money 'graf...

"The film often sounded horrible -- as though the voices were forced through a tin megaphone. Also, the orchestra overwhelmed sweet moments that define the film, such as Dorothy's goodbye to her three companions; and iconic signatures were somehow lost. How, for example, can you have the witch's guards marching about without hearing them sing "oh-ee-yah; ee-OH-ah?" Was this just a problem Thursday night, or a function of the process that split instrumental from vocal? Yikes."

This is a perfect example of the challenge that symphony orchestras face when trying to present innovative concerts that blend 21st century technology with our decidedly 19th-century way of performing. Orchestras are built to perform without amplification, in concert halls designed specifically for that purpose. Stick us in the Xcel Energy Center, and you'll never hear a note we play, because those spaces are designed for amplified sound. Similarly, suddenly adding amplification to a concert hall can result in ear-splitting or unintelligible sound, even if you have extremely competent people running the sound board (and believe me, we do.)

The toughest challenge of all is blending amplified and unamplified sound in a space designed for the latter. This is a nightmare that our chief sound guy, Terry Tilley, lives on a regular basis. The sad fact is that, as good as Terry is at his job, budget constraints force him to regularly attempt seriously high-tech production tricks using sound equipment that would get laughed out of venues like First Avenue.

So, the obvious question is, why don't symphony orchestras, which are massive organizations by arts standards, invest in cutting-edge sound and video equipment that would make shows like our Wizard of Oz less of a risk? After all, the technology does exist to make amplified sound at least somewhat workable in a space like ours, so why don't we have it?

The answer is complicated, but it basically boils down to priorities and how you manage them. The primary mission of a symphony orchestra is to present unamplified performances of great concert music, and most musicians (myself included) believe that it will remain so for the foreseeable future. And since money is always extremely tight (yes, orchestras have big budgets, but we also have far and away the highest overhead of any type of arts group,) large expenditures for anything that falls outside that core mission tend to be a tough sell.

Musicians, in particular, are incredibly sensitive to any large-scale organizational plan that seems to be pushing us away from a concert music-based business model, and towards a model in which classical music is secondary to pops, or film music, or whatever. And since a first-rate amplification system (not to mention a permanent in-house digital video capability) for a venue like Orchestra Hall would cost millions to purchase, install, and calibrate, and since that system would be literally idle during the majority of our performances, it's tough to convince musicians that this would be money well spent, especially when we're seeing our benefits and pensions slashed, our contracts cut back, and our friends on the staff side laid off to save a few thousand dollars in the worst economy of our lifetimes.

This may well be a no-win situation. If we spend the money to bring Orchestra Hall up to 21st century A/V standards, we're open to legitimate criticism that we're not properly focusing on the core mission of a symphony orchestra and wasting the money of donors who prefer Beethoven to bells and whistles. If we stick with the technology we have, and make a point of never mounting any performances that push the limits of those capabilities, we're essentially condemning ourselves to being the kind of organization that willfully ignores modernity and eventually renders itself irrelevant.

And if we try to split the difference, mounting ambitious programs that may not be up to the considerable technological standard that many consumers have come to expect in the age of HDTV and digital surround sound, the Graydon Royces of the world are going to feel rightly compelled to point out that our capability doesn't always match our ambition.

Whenever I write a post about the challenges of the orchestra business, I try to at least throw out a few potential solutions. But try as I might, I haven't been able to come up with a solution to this problem that doesn't involve me winning the Powerball. So I'm punting this one to the readership: what would you do? The comments section eagerly awaits your creativity...