Name the publication year of the following excerpt from Time magazine:
”As a group, the symphony orchestras of the U.S. are unsurpassed in quality by those of any other nation in the world. Yet today they are in trouble — loud, unavoidable, cymbal-crashing financial trouble.”
That’s right, 1969. Or, did you guess a slightly more recent year?
The article is unearthed and shared again by Jesse Rosen, President and CEO of the League of American Orchestras in the current issue of Symphony (you can read the article on-line). Drawing from a McKinsey & Co. report on the dire straits of American symphonies at the time, the article went on to suggest that up to a half of the nation’s major symphonies would be out of business by 1973.
Rosen takes the opportunity to ask a panel of guest experts — William Foster, Russell Willis Taylor, and Peter Pastreich — why so much of the article sounds familiar today, and why those orchestras actually got bigger rather than dropping dead. The conversation makes you wonder why we keep on talking about orchestras in crisis, and how we could still be listing the very same themes for the problem without much variation after four decades.
This theme continues because being on the verge of crisis is more or less the permanent state of American orchestras. Look at Philadelphia and Detroit. Think of how the orchestras in even our largest and richest cities like Miami, Kansas City, and San Diego have gone completely bankrupt only to struggle back to life in a reduced state and begin building again. Miami never made it back at all even though it is among the ten richest cities in the world.
The problem is our private funding system. It doesn’t work very well. We are the only developed country in the world without a comprehensive system of public arts funding. We only have 13 orchestras with 52 week seasons while Germany with on quarter the population has 136. Germany has 83 year-round opera houses while we do not have any. Even the Met only has a seven month season. Little Finland with a population of 5.5 million has 12 regional opera houses while the vast majority of Americans will never have a viable chance to hear a genunienly professional company in a real opera house.
Due to the economy, Europeans have had to make cuts, but their support for the arts still remains tens of times higher than ours and with measurable results in the number of fulltime, year-round orchestras and opera houses. 40 years from now, our orchestras will still be in crisis if we continue with our private funding system. And arts managers who specialize in our system will continue to work with something inherently crippled, like veterinarians for one-winged birds.
I’m currently trying to locate an article referenced in Mark de Wolfe Howe’s book about the Boston Symphony. The article concerns
the aging of audiences written by H. T Parker in the Boston Transcript.
It was penned in 1911.
“Miami never made it back?” It never left.
Miami is currently home to The New World Symphony, which just built its own hall in Miami Beach, and the Miami Symphony, which plays a variety of venues. Other local symphonies include the South Florida Symphony (formerly the Key West Symphony), and the Symphony of the Americas.
Why do we think our orchestras and opera houses are culturally entitled to operate year round when they are offering programming that is not indigenous to our uniquely American culture in the way that symphonic music and opera are deeply rooted in western European cultures?
In New York City, we have 40+ Broadway theatres that are operating year-round…with, for the most part, artistic product that is uniquely American.
Yet again, the perspective of a renowned international performer offers a fundamental issue the US should be addressing (and hinted at here and there. Occasionally.):
“Playing music in America you feel like you’re selling a luxury item. But in England you’re providing a necessity.”
Isaac Stern
[For ‘England’, read ‘Europe’]
Yes, European & English orchestras get big government cutbacks too, but every child is required to have music lessons in school to the age of 14, as well. Society at large do see the arts as essential. How can we educate US public and decision-makers likewise?
Remember: There’s more to music than music!
http://www.stephenpbrown.com
Another possibility is that we should stop listening to McKinsey & Co. Just how much do ten fresh-outs who fly around the country each week (… led by a partner sitting in a New York restaurant … ) know? Among the recommendations my ballet company received long ago was that we needed a written employee manual. Well, since most of the staff were contractually laid off for twelve weeks every summer, we’d have had plenty of time to read it, I guess.
“And arts managers who specialize in our system will continue to work with something inherently crippled, like veterinarians for one-winged birds.”
William Osborne, you are awesome.