Can anybody fix the Oregon Symphony?
It will take more than an endorsement from Portland's reigning pop music star, Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini. The orchestra lost its charismatic conductor and now is losing audience and supporters, even as it's playing better than ever.
Thomas Lauderdale skipped onto the Schnitzer Concert Hall stage to thunderous applause. It was opening night of the Oregon Symphony's new season. Lauderdale - Portland band Pink Martini's sassy spike-haired leader - trotted out, flashed a big grin, and gushed breathlessly about the Symphony's season ahead.
The audience roared its approval. Lauderdale disappeared into the wings. Conductor Carlos Kalmar took the podium.
But as I listened to the symphony play a respectable if safe season-opening concert, I wondered what Lauderdale's enthusiastic endorsement of the symphony really meant. Why was this Portland pop star, the city's current cultural ambassador to the world, being pimped as a spokesman for our increasingly conservative and debt-saddled flagship orchestra?
Lauderdale, to his credit, stayed in his balcony seat for that first concert. At intermission, I watched him drag on a cigarette behind the Schnitz. I've frequently seen Lauderdale mobbed by fans at his Portland appearances. At symphony half-time, throngs of concertgoers squeezed by this most famous of Portland personalities. This night, nobody asked for an autograph.
His newly visible participation seems shrewdly designed to reposition the Symphony as a cultural institution as hip, as necessary, and as unmistakably Portland as Lauderdale himself. There's one problem, though. The Oregon Symphony is not that institution.
Lauderdale's pre-concert endorsement appearance is the kind of desperate and calculated tactic the Oregon Symphony is employing not only to improve box office numbers but, far more worrisome, to call attention away from real artistic, financial, and leadership problems. The Symphony is failing, and not just financially.
What's gotten the Oregon Symphony to this precipitous point? For more than 20 years, beloved conductor James DePreist galvanized Portland audiences as music director. DePreist ushered the symphony into a new era, fully professionalizing the orchestra and connecting with the Portland community. His name adorns a star cemented just outside the concert hall, and he casts a long shadow.
It is unreasonable to expect DePreist's successor, Carlos Kalmar, to carry the banner in the same way. Kalmar is his own type of person and conductor. He is an energetic conductor who excels in big symphonic staples. But he is also seen as an "outsider" because of his busy international schedule, which means he rarely sets down in Portland for much longer than is required of his engagements here. Few Portlanders would recognize him on the street.
After a multi-year search, the symphony installed a new president, experienced Canadian arts manager Elaine Calder, this past summer. In an interview during her first month on the job, Calder called Lauderdale "the heart of Portland's cultural community." She said that if anyone had taken on the mantle of James DePreist, it was Lauderdale. That heady endorsement speaks to the hole in the heart of the Oregon Symphony.
Swimming in debt, hemorrhaging audiences and supporters, and lacking any innovative programming ideas, the Oregon Symphony could be at one of the lowest points in recent history. Last fiscal year, the Symphony ended $2 million in the red, on an annual budget of about $14 million. It has stopped recording, as it did frequently during DePreist's tenure (even garnering a Grammy nomination in 2003). Murray Sidlin's much-revered "Nerve Endings" concerts, which framed classical music in dramatic or nontraditional formats and brought in young and diverse audiences, have been abandoned.
The Symphony only rarely travels outside its home at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, a hall often maligned for its unfavorable acoustices and uncomfortable seats. The orchestra hasn't appeared outside Oregon in over a decade. Kalmar's commitment to new music is dubious at best. In five years here, he has never really developed a strong profile or connected with the Portland community.
Paradoxically, though, under Kalmar's leadership, the Symphony's overall sound has improved dramatically - players, audience members, and critics across the boards agree on this. Symphony musicians seem energized by the fresh faces among the orchestra ranks, many emerging from top conservatories. Jun Iwasaki, the symphony's 25-year-old new concertmaster, shows great promise.
Putting aside, then, the cosmetic quick-fix attempts such as commandeering Thomas Lauderdale's star appeal, what else can be done to turn this ship around?
One example is the Brooklyn Philharmonic, a group that by the 1990s had lost most of its audience and was struggling to keep itself afloat. Joseph Horowitz, an enterprising music historian and provocateur, turned the orchestra under his leadership as executive director into an "experimental laboratory for a different kind of concert experience." He mixed popular and vernacular genres with the most outré contemporary classical musics, and initiated mini-festivals around relevant historical/musical themes. Robert Spano served as the galvanizing conductor, 1996-2004, attracting a much broader audience. (Spano is known in Seattle for conducting the most recent Wagner Ring for Seattle Opera.)
It would be unfair to expect the Oregon Symphony to offer innovative programming ideas and commissioning projects in the way Michael Tilson Thomas has done in San Francisco, or Esa Pekka-Salonen in Los Angeles, or James Levine in Boston. But regional orchestras with budgets much smaller than Oregon's are producing fresh, inventive programs. The South Dakota Symphony regularly programs adventurous new music alongside established classics: a recent concert paired Beethoven's Third Symphony with American composer Lowell Liebermann's Third Piano Concerto, a new work from 2006. The San Antonio Symphony's programs this year include a commissioned world premiere, as well as works from American composers including Charles Ives, John Corigiliano, John Adams, and the young Gabriela Frank.
Moreover, Portland is home to several ear-opening new music groups, such as Third Angle, Fear No Music, and the Portland Cello Project, so maybe Portland really is a good city for a more contemporary-tuned audience at the symphony. I'm not sure what Lauderdale knows about classical music, but he could undoubtedly offer some fresh thinking on pops and crossover repertoire. Would it be too much to ask, as well, for some new ideas in the classical series, celebrity endorsement or no?
A few weeks after that season-opening concert, an e-mail from Lauderdale and Pink Martini arrived in my inbox. It encouraged Pink Martini fans to check out the Oregon Symphony, and included this bold statement of support: "Under the leadership of conductor Carlos Kalmar, we believe this orchestra is on its way to becoming one of the very best orchestras in the United States."
Pleasant thought, but much more will need to be done to make me believe such a claim.
Comments:
Posted Fri, Nov 2, 7:56 a.m. inappropriate
not desperate, just long overdue: First of all, Thomas Lauderdale knows a thing or two about classical music - he's a classically trained pianist (heard him play a Brahms piano quartet a few years ago - excellent) and he is a regular OSO concertgoer and supporter. He has (according to what I know) been itching to jump in and have a hand with some sort of role with the Oregon Symphony for years, and he's finally gotten his chance. I hardly find that to be cynical. He mentions the Oregon Symphony and its qualities at every out-of-town and in-town show that Pink Martini plays, and when some of us OSO musicians perform with the band, he is constantly asking us what is going on, how are things going, how can he help. Maybe it does seem calculated - but shouldn't we be making moves that are calculated to improve the situation of the orchestra?
Posted Sat, Nov 3, 1:06 a.m. inappropriate
???: It is certainly true that the Oregon Symphony is struggling financially and that concert attendance has been in a slump. There are a number of possible reasons for this, but it seems that under Elaine Calder the symphony is taking steps to address these problems. However, the orchestra is thriving artistically, and there's no denying that this is largely due to the work of Carlos Kalmar. Kalmar's commitment to new music is not "dubious at best," and if he hasn't connected with the community in the same way James DePriest did, one possible reason is that he just hasn't been here nearly as long. Kalmar has a busy international career that keeps him away from Portland when he's not conducting here, but James DePriest was music director of the Monte Carlo Philharmonic during his tenure with the OSO. That's not exactly next door. And what about the OSO's supposed programming deficit? Beaudoin writes, "Regional orchestras with budgets much smaller than Oregon's are producing fresh, inventive programs. The South Dakota Symphony regularly programs adventurous new music alongside established classics...the San Antonio Symphony's programs this year include a commissioned world premiere, as well as works from American composers including Charles Ives, John Corigiliano, John Adams, and the young Gabriela Frank."
Last year the Oregon Symphony performed a commissioned world premier (by local composer Robert Kyr), as well as works from American composers including Charles Ives, Steve Mackey, and Christopher Rouse. John Adams' Chamber Symphony is coming up this winter. And these new works are programmed alongside classics performed at an unprecedentedly high artistic level.
The OSO has challenges, to be sure. At this point, however, the most pressing challenges are financial. Blaming the music director for all the orchestra's woes doesn't really make sense. The music director's job is really to make music, and Kalmar has been amazingly successful in bringing the OSO to new artistic heights. Thomas Lauderdale knows what he's talking about when he says that this orchestra is on its way to becoming one of the very best orchestras in the United States. I have the utmost faith that Portland will soon recognize this, too, even if Mr. Beaudoin doesn't.
Posted Sat, Nov 3, 6:43 a.m. inappropriate
Kalmar is not the problem: As a member of the Grant Park Orchestra in Chicago, I would like to respond. Under the leadership of Carlos Kalmar, the Grant Park Music Festival has recorded the following CDs for Cedille Records:
American Works for Organ and Orchestra (Barber, Piston, Sowerby, Colgrass)
Music of Robert Kurka
Jednnifer Koh: Portraits (Szymanowski, Martinu, Bartok)
American Orchestral Works (Kolb, Kernis, Hersch, Corigliano, Harbison)
2 more CDs will be released in 2008--both featuring contemporary composers
The Grant Park Orchestra gave the Chicago premiere of John Adams' "Transmigration of Souls", and continues to present unknown, modern works to the public. The festival enjoys public accolades from the press for innovative programming.
The Grant Park Music Festival consistently experiences audiences of 8-12,000 per concert. While acknowledging the differences between cities and venues, Kalmar has established a reputation as being a champion of contemporary orchestral music. His "dubious" track record for programming modern pieces speaks for itself.
Does the Oregon Symphony want to make the same mistake as they did in San Antonio? It's much too easy to blame the Music Director for problems that encompass a wider circumference. If Lauderdale is the heart of Portland's cultural community, perhaps that is a statement worth further investigation. Kudos to him for trying to spark the interest of the local audience.
The problem (and this is another topic altogether) does not lie with the current Music Director of the Oregon Symphony. Does anyone else see the irony of two stories appearing on the same page of the ArtsJournal website entitled "Claim: The Oregon Symphony Is Broken", and "Why Do People Want To Hear The Really Terrible Orchestra?".
Posted Sat, Nov 3, 2 p.m. inappropriate
Half Truths and Unsubstantiated "Factoids": I found Stephen Marc Beaudoin's recent article about the Oregon Symphony distressing. Snide and cynical, it certainly is effective journalism (people are actually responding!) but is filled with half baked hypotheses and untruths. And I feel for the good people at the OSO, all of them - orchestra members, staff, Kalmar, board and other volunteers - who are "fighting the good fight" to make the OSO as good and successful as it can be. That snide "know it all" attitude seems down right disrespectful.
No doubt the orchestra is playing as well or better than it ever has. And guess what? Kalmar is to thank for that. Keen ears, uncompromising artistic standards and creativity have brought them to an ironic place. Yes, ironic because they are better than ever and experiencing what orchestras all across the USA and world are experiencing - trouble with adapting to the changing marketplace. You see, this isn't just about the OSO. It's happening everywhere.
Mr. Beaudoin, please write effectively about changing the business model and give us all some answers. We are waiting to be shown the way. Since it is a fact that a solid music education is the main predictor of attendance, please tell us how to get music education back in the schools. You are falling into that typically American trap of blaming the problem on its outward manifestation and not on the root cause.
I was at an OSO concert a few weeks ago and heard Berio's Folk Songs, not exactly tired old standard rep for orchestras these days. Congratulations to Mr. Kalmar and the musicians of the OSO for an arresting performance. But Berio just doesn't sell. So, you want them to program contemporary music and sell lots of tickets. Please, tell us how.
Kalmar may be seen as an outsider to xenophobic Portlanders, but he is no carpetbagger. He has devoted an immense amount of time and energy to the OSO and that is fact. Continuing to beat the same old residency drum is embarrassing and distracts us from the real issues. The last I heard, Kalmar owned an apartment here and devoted more time per season on average to the OSO than most music directors of major American orchestras.
Citing the Brooklyn Philharmonic as an example is laughable. It's a wonderful organization but struggling valiantly to stay afloat as bankruptcy is never far away. During the same years you mentioned the subscription base there was decimated. Go study the facts.
Kalmar is the best thing that happened to the OSO, which was languishing with poor performance standards and mediocrity before he came on board. Thanks to the musicians of the OSO and Chicago who stood up for him.
Posted Sun, Nov 4, 4:31 a.m. inappropriate
Focus on the problem!: You people who are focusing on programming are really missing the boat, and your defensiveness is to be expected. Even if the Schnitz were sold out for every concert, the OS would still not solve its financial problem. Hello! Is anybody listening?!?
The OS sells the right number of tickets for a city the size of PDX. The fact that the concert hall is huge creates an artfical benchmark for success. If the OS played in an 1800 or 1900 seat hall, all would be swell. The programming and quality of the performances, while open to subjective opinion (it is, afterall, an art form) will never, ever create success or fix the current problem.
Here's the breaking news, folks: Portland thrives on mediocrity and non-greatness. No superstars or big-time leaders. Just enough to make it maybe work. Let's all get along...process over the success of the individual....
It's time for the OS to realize that after trying many good things to raise money over the past decade, the community just won't sustain what is needed to operate the OS as it is. I agree with the writer - the OS has no soul, and has no critical personality to match that of DePreist's. PDX is a small town, and having a full time face in the community is a real asset. Those who disagree have not lived here long enough....(unless you attended U of O or OSU, you are an outsider...)
Webern, Ligeti et al won't make or break the OS. Look at Seattle, with relatively conservative programming. They have people stepping up left and right with cash to float the boat. It's called civic pride - "we want to be the best we can be" - that's allowed Seattle to thrive across the board. (Sorry Blazer fans, I know the "Seattle inferiority complex" touches a nerve!)
The result in PDX will continue to be mediocrity at the cost of what those who aspire to un-greatness will support. Talented musicians, staff and board members will continue to churn. Politicans will hold meetings and talk the good talk. Corporations will continue to leave, unable to thrive in the "creative class" culture that does nothing to support business and corporate infastructure and growth.
It's not about progamming. It's about the lack of community non-ticket buying support. They just don't care. I've been asked a zillion times to support, so I know the OS is trying.
Finding and sustaining the reported $2 million shortfall is just not going to happen in PDX. Who's going to fix it? How do you cut $2 million per year in expenses?
Posted Sun, Nov 4, 6:15 a.m. inappropriate
One correction: The Seattle Symphony also has terrible $ troubles. With or without their well loved (from the community perspective, not the orchestra) Music Director, they are in big trouble, too.
Posted Sun, Nov 4, 8:11 a.m. inappropriate
Correction - At least Seattle Symphony did something about their $$ problem and have a plan..: The Seattle Symphony closes a $2 million budget gap
The stage is set now for a three-year, $70 million endowment campaign.
By David Brewster - Crosscut
The Seattle Symphony Orchestra, which a few months ago predicted it would end the current season with a deficit in the range of $2 million, instead will end the fiscal year in the black, Board of Directors chair Susan Hutchison says. "It's looking very, very good right now" that an urgent drive among 20-plus major donors has closed the gap, said Hutchison, the former Seattle television news anchor and executive director of the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences. The urgent drive raised $2.8 million.
Ending the year with a balanced budget is a key step toward the symphony's goal of announcing an endowment campaign in the coming season, Hutchison explained. The SSO's current endowment is around $33 million, and the new, three-year campaign will have a goal of raising that to $100 million. Gifts from the Simonyi Fund and longtime symphony benefactor Jack Benaroya in 2004 raised the relatively paltry endowment by $10 million.
A recent managment study of the symphony showed that it ranks very high in ticket sales, with only an orchestra or two in the country having more than the SSO's 37,000 season ticket holders. Also, the McKinstry study showed that the SSO manages costs very well, Hutchison reported. So with little room to cut expenses and not many more tickets to sell, the solution for chronic deficits was obvious: Build up the endowment and do a better job of fundraising.
Music director Gerard Schwarz and Hutchison will lead the drive in coming years, and the board has been charged with spending less time bickering over the future musical direction of the symphony and more time raising money. Hutchison said the current "close-the-gap" drive to balance the books for the 2006-07 season consisted mainly of donors who are "huge fans of Jerry," meaning Schwarz.
According to Hutchison, the SSO has been "resting on its laurels" for too long. It lacked a development director for several years and has endured considerable management turmoil. Many of the donors who helped build Benaroya Hall have not been contacted or solicited since that campaign. Hutchison said they'll soon be getting phone calls.
David Brewster is Crosscut's publisher. You can e-mail him at david.brewster@crosscut.com.
Posted Sun, Nov 4, 8:47 a.m. inappropriate
Question: Thanks for the article, Dave. A question or two:
What was the SSO's accumulated deficit before the $2 million board bail out this year?
And how many years had there been deficits to this point?
Thanks.
Posted Sun, Nov 4, 9:07 a.m. inappropriate
Clarification: The Seattle Symphony article from Crosscut was from earlier this year, and not in response to the Oregon Symphony piece. I simply offered it here for convenience and comparison purposes as a regular Crosscut reader. Sorry for the confusion.
Posted Sun, Nov 4, 12:30 p.m. inappropriate
Clarification on Seattle Symphony: Since my earlier article got put into the comment thread, let me amplify a bit. SSO has been, like Portland, running a structural deficit in the $1-2 million range for the past few years. This past year, they got to break even by hitting up donors for a special drive, postponing payment into the musician's pension fund, and taking a windfall amount from the endowment, which was outperforming the normal 5 percent yield. The structural problem remains, even though ticket sales are high. The heart of the SSO problem is a small endowment, hovering around $30 million when it was supposed to be double that by now, to keep up with promised musicians' salary increases. Key will be whether the Symphony can regroup, after a period of a divided board and departing general managers, and get the endowment soon to a proposed $100 million level.
Posted Sun, Nov 4, 10:45 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Correction - At least Seattle Symphony did something about their $$ problem and have a plan..: The Seattle Symphony is really a different story - the board is essentially hand-picked by Schwartz, and there is so much more money on their board on the order of magnitude above the OSO's. If there is a crisis, Schwartz can go to the heavy hitters on the board and get the cash infusion that he needs. This doesn't seem possible here. In addition, the amount of money floating around in Seattle is much greater than what there should be for a city of that size - there is Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks money, not to mention Weyerhauser and a still significant Boeing presence.
One fact which has been overlooked in this discussion so far is that Portland is a rapidly growing community - and the fastest growing sector seems to be the affluent arts-savvy group of people who should be prime audiences for the symphony. With a larger population base and thus more unclaimed butts to put in seats, the strategy of how to pursue these potentials really does make a difference.
Posted Mon, Nov 5, 12:27 p.m. inappropriate
Correlation Does Not Imply Causation, etc.: I've had this article sent to me by friends/family as well as seen it referenced on music websites, and apparently it is among the "most popular" articles at this website. I strongly hope that readers take careful notice of the very first comment on this page. Although the comment only addresses one of the concerns of this article (albeit a primary concern), it's the kind of relevant information and necessary perspective on the situation that the article lacks.
For every artistic institution that I've ever been involved in, I could cite similar articles. In my experience, they grab attention with dire and sensational but inaccurate claims, and the result is usually harmful to the organization and situations involved. Not that there aren't also facts within this article, but not many of them, and refer to the headline of this comment.
Sometimes authors claim that their intent was only to incite dialogue, but in these cases it's more like provoking refutation. I completely admit that my first reaction to this article was the desire was to write a lengthy dissection, but when I read the first comment I realized that it really wasn't necessary.
Posted Tue, Nov 6, 6:43 a.m. inappropriate
The Oregon Symphony responds: Of course it will take more than an endorsement from Thomas Lauderdale to fix the Oregon Symphony. But Thomas is a subscriber to our full classical series, and a classically trained musician who has appeared with the Oregon Symphony as a guest artist and will again in the future. In performances around the world, he generously credits some of Pink Martini's success to its early appearances with our Orchestra. He cares passionately about our organization and wants to help. And he's wonderfully tuned in to Portland and Portland audiences. As Beaudoin points out, he's the most famous of Portland personalities. Why wouldn't we accept his offer of help?
Let's start by geting one simple fact straight: We've been losing audiences - but not supporters. Our contributed income is higher than ever, thanks in large part to the Miller match, a three-year challenge by the Miller Foundation to our audiences and donors that has greatly increased our donor base. We have many thousands of contributors including some who make six figure gifts annually. We aren't Seattle, San Francisco or Los Angeles, but we do have patrons of means, and patrons with heart, who are determined that this Orchestra must survive and flourish.
And they are determined because this Orchestra is playing for them, week after week, at an exceptionally high standard of performance. No, we aren't as "hip" as Lauderdale, and not as "unmistakably Portland" - whatever that means. But we are Portland's local orchestra, and "local" resonates with Portlanders. We are a band of musicians who live and work in this community, providing classical and popular concerts at the Schnitz, education programs in our schools, teaching and adjudicating, and forming the nucleus and artistic leadership of smaller organizations like Fear No Music and Third Angle.
Under Carlos Kalmar our classical programming has broadened greatly. As Assistant Principal Viola, Charles Noble, points out in his blog (nobleviola.com/wordpress) subscriptions were falling even in DePreist's final seasons, with wall-to-wall Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. In the first years of Carlos's tenure, the Oregon Symphony has performed music by Benjamin Britten, Steven Mackey, György Ligeti, John Adams, Bohuslav Martinu, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Harrison Birtwistle, Luciano Berio, Henri Dutilleux and Alban Berg, among others. Many of these composers' works had never before been performed by the Oregon Symphony in its history. Everyone has an opinion on programming and every orchestra will be too conservative or too adventurous for some of its patrons and critics, all of the time.
Audiences numbers are crucial though, and we're working to reverse the damage of the past few seasons. I use the word "damage" advisedly. Change is essential for the continued vitality of any organization, but some of the changes in recent seasons were ill-advised or insensitively handled. And at least one of them was turned into a major news story with the kind of headline usually reserved for WAR DECLARED. (Yes, the Symphony's overall sound has improved dramatically, but that kind of improvement isn't achieved painlessly.)
The rest of this response can be found at artsjournal.com and nobleviola.com/wordpress.
Elaine Calder
President
Oregon Symphony Association
ecalder@orsymphony.org