The arts out here? More complicated than you think

It strikes me now, Mike, that I missed the heart of your comment, which was about leadership and organization: "Who is taking the lead in making sure that the $3 million no longer flowing to the perhaps deservedly defunct SSO is now finding its way to some more promising local effort(s) to regroup, rebuild, learn from past mistakes and provide a strong local focal point for classical music?" My answer is that there is no leader and there are no promising groups. In other words, there is no one person or group of people to ensure money previously spent on the SSO goes to some other worthy group. The SSO's adminstration disbanded and mostly left town. Board members have become involved in other pursuits, one being a charitable music education group. Most of the SSO's former audience base now simply goes out of town to see concerts or tries to bring regional orchestras to town (that's how the Jacksonville Symphony got here). It's cheaper in their eyes than paying millions to maintain an institution. I've written about this kind of "outsourcing." Go to my personal blog at johnstoehr.wordpress.com and search for "outsourcing." What's missing on the part of these folks is a sense of civic obligation, a sense that an orchestra is good for the city and its people. Somewhere in the midst of the SSO being a social occasion, the orchestra board forget about that notion. If they had that sense, there might be more hope for a re-formed orchestra. The worst blow, however, is that most of the 38 orchestral musicians are gone. They found work and lives elsewhere. The talent pool is now so shallow that even the admirable efforts of the Savannah Sinfonietta suffer from being padded with amateurs or college students. Only an influx of cash and a renewed organization infrastructure would entice quality musicians to relocate to Savannah. As painful as it is for me to say, I doubt that will happen any time soon.

I don't know where the $3 million went, because it came mostly from private sources. My guess is that a lot of it went to the Telfair Museum of Art and the Savannah Music Festival, two organizations that have made the case that they are worth investing in. Money that did come from public sources was redirected into other classical music organizations, especially the one I mentioned in my post. It's called the Savannah Sinfonietta and it's about as close to a new orchetral-type group as we've gotten. But is not, thus far anyway, a replacement for the institutional gravitas of the SSO. I think your distinction is exactly right. Touring groups come, but then they're gone, with no lingering impact on the local community. No one here is waiting for an outside group to make classical music healthy again. My point was that the art itself is doing OK (audience are buying tickets; children are still being bussed in to hear concerts). Even without the touring groups, classical music is still alive, though hardly thriving, because it's still being taught in the local colleges and still being taught in the local public schools (at least in this county; others are not as fortunate).

Art won't flourish long in a community if artists in all genres aren't at least surviving and being given a platform to emerge as leaders and recognized talents. You need good local examples to foster and inspire creativity, as well as the community pride that inspires arts patronage. You need people who are there every day and not just touring big city groups dropping in, earning their fees, and moving on to the next stop. If the local arts scene is ailing, for whatever reason, sitting back and waiting for it to be provided from the outside makes you the equivalent of a chaotic Third World country relying on sacks of foreign aid grain. You may not starve, but you will lack dignity and you will not have a chance to progress. Who is taking the lead in making sure that the $3 million no longer flowing to the perhaps deservedly defunct SSO is now finding its way to some more promising local effort(s) to regroup, rebuild, learn from past mistakes and provide a strong local focal point for classical music?