Klarinet Archive - Posting 000344.txt from 1998/06

From: "David C. Blumberg" <reedman@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] An Interesting Article (reprint)
Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 16:36:36 -0400

Hard reality requires more than artistry:

By Tom Strini of the Journal
Sentinel
February 15, 1998
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A very long time
ago, American orchestra musicians held
prestigious, low-paying jobs more or
less for the love of it. They
made ends meet by teaching lessons and playing
side jobs. The cost
of running an orchestra was relatively low; a handful of
wealthy
patrons could keep one going.
Not so very long ago, citizens
voted for politicians who believed
that federal, state and local governments
could make life better
by taking a little from everyone to do nice things
that no one
person or small group of people could do on their own.
The
performing arts -- particularly the high arts of European origin
--
fell into the "good things" category. They were, after all,
good for the
soul and for civic pride, and they had some nice
economic fallout.
Then
there was the shame factor. In Europe, government funded the
arts at nearly
100%. At 0%, by contrast, how could America call
itself cultured? Or even
civilized? The National Endowment for the
Arts was born, and similar
agencies popped up at state and local
levels.
Performing arts centers
sprouted across the land. Middling cities
-- Tulsa, San Antonio, Milwaukee,
Portland, Denver, Tampa -- that
never had fully professional orchestras,
theater companies and
ballets suddenly had them. For a while, contributions
from all
levels of government hit 20% or more for some groups.
Local
boosters read NEA grants as seals of approval and pitched in
their
own dollars. Times were good.
Within a decade, though, everything
changed. Highly skilled,
unionized performers had negotiated contracts
calling for
year-round employment, whether or not there was an audience for
52
weeks of symphonic music. Costs outpaced income, and orchestras
and
other cultural organizations started to run deficits.
Meanwhile,
avant-garde performers demanded, and got, their share
of the NEA pie. Tiny
though that share was, they managed to do
some naughty things with the
money, which caught the attention of
those politicians who prosper by
pretending to be outraged by
naughty things.
At the same time, the
economy convulsed, the anti-tax movement
rolled through the land, the
religious right smelled blood in the
water off NEA beach, the upper-middle
class fled to the suburbs,
and all of America turned on its cable TVs and
started wasting
massive blocks of time on the Internet.
Sports and pop
culture became more all-consuming than ever.
Schools dropped music and
bought computers. People voted for
politicians who believed on principle
that government should never
spend money on anything, especially on those
dirty-minded,
high-falutin' arts.
Arts institutions were left lonely,
broke, isolated and irrelevant
in their no-longer-so-shiny-new central city
palaces. Deficits
rose, the audience aged; panic, despair and resentment
raged
through the industry.
Undaunted by reality, musicians nationwide
demanded more money
from beleaguered and often clueless boards of directors,
and
frequently threatened strikes to get it. The boards responded with
cuts
in salary and benefits. A few orchestras folded.
Managements and musicians
alike fumed over the cultural idiocy and
short-sighted stinginess of the
nation. They looked longingly to
Europe, where every one-horse town has a
theater, opera, orchestra
and ballet fully supported by the
government.
Yes, in Europe they didn't have to worry about selling
tickets.
They could just waft along on their lofty, subsidized quest
for
The Ideal. Never mind that artistic directors there can come and
go
with the fortunes of politics, or that politcally favored
performers can be
on the payroll for years without stepping on the
stage, or that musicians in
some state orchestras are so fireproof
that they can play badly and sabotage
conductors with impunity.
American singers and dancers who have worked in
European houses
will regale you with horror tales of laziness and
self-indulgence.
After years of griping and whining, American orchestras
-- meaning
boards, managements and musicians -- are finally coming to
grips
with reality. This isn't Europe; even the skimpy subsidies
that
remain here are not safe.
People in the arts business are finally
coming to accept that the
populace is under no moral obligation to support
them, through tax
dollars, the box office or contributions. A concert is not
a
church service in which the conductor is the priest, the musicians
the
acolytes and the audience the reverent congregation in a
ceremony that is
pretty much the same week after week. A preacher
might credibly damn a
congregant to hell for not attending his
service or refusing to drop a
sawbuck on the collection plate; a
conductor cannot.
The search is on for
new, specifically American ways for
orchestras to behave and survive.
Milwaukee Symphony musicians
have been calling subscribers to say hi and see
how they're
enjoying the concerts -- unimaginable a few years ago. They
are
giving free lessons to minority kids and doing lots of lectures
and
performances in public schools. They are serving on board
committees. They
are talking on the radio to promote the MSO. They
are beginning to see their
institution through the entrepeneurial
eye of an owner rather than the
jaundiced eye of an oppressed
worker.
Orchestras must earn their support,
by connecting with the
community (and not just the white, upper and
upper-middle class
community), coddling customers with service and, most of
all, by
putting on a great show.
If you don't put large numbers of butts
on seats, you don't
deserve to survive. But you have to do it in the right
way, not by
stooping to the lowest common denominator (say, Andrew
Lloyd
Webber on classical subscription).
The MSO and other orchestras
will succeed with music, new and old,
that engages the mind and heart, that
demands and rewards the
closest attention, and that surprises in some way.
Programming is
key; works must be aligned so as to shed light upon one
another,
so that the concert as a whole becomes more than the sum of
its
parts and the season as a whole make an overarching statement.
A
sense of event is crucial. Lobby displays and pre- and
post-concert affairs
that reveal something about the music help.
In his essay today in adjacent
columns, music director Andreas
Delfs mentions the MSO's recent Brahms
exhibit, which put the
"ghost" of Brahms at a Disklavier in the lobby. That
caused a
buzz; symphony orchestras, like every other part of show
business,
need buzz.
Controversy can be good that way. When people come
out of a
concert debating its merits, that concert was a success, even
if
everyone didn't like it. Orchestras, like critics, don't have to
be
right, they just have to be interesting.
The urgent tone of Maestro Delfs'
essay and his long list of
initiatives speak to the vigor with which his
organization is
engaging the future. The MSO is working hard and taking
chances
and doing a lot of things right. The orchestra's 1998-'99
season,
announced in today's Cue section, is a model of
intelligent,
calculated risk. It should cause a buzz.
Tom Strini is the
Journal Sentinel's music critic.

David Blumberg
reedman@-----.com
http://www.sneezy.org/clarinet/Music/Blumberg.html
http://www.sneezy.org/clarinet/Sponsors/

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