Posted by Jay Bertolet on March 15, 2002 at 12:11:50:
In Reply to: Re: Re: War Requiem posted by js on March 15, 2002 at 09:36:56:
I couldn't agree more Joe! In fact, this is exactly what we did last fall when the musicians of the FPO decided enough was enough. Management and board came to us last fall and said they couldn't pay the bills and we were facing a shut down. Of course, they wanted us to agree to immediate pay cuts. We're looking at the season schedule and we don't see a single "symphony" programmed. Can you believe that? Not a single one! We also see things like Mendlessohn's Elijah which were selling miserably at the box office. We consistently had fairly esoteric pieces, very expensive to produce, regularly put on our programs. Can you believe that in the entire 16 years I've been here, we have not once played Brahms 4? In that same time span, we've played Brahms 3 only once. Before we were going to give away our hard earned money, we were going to see a remedy to this situation.
The solution we came up with was to agree to the pay cuts for this season and next season to give the institution time to fix its financial troubles. In return, a new committee was established, the Artistic Oversight Committee. This committee was charged with final authority in matters of programming, guests artists, guest conductors, and the like. The makeup of the committee is split exactly evenly, 50% musicians and 50% board/conductors. That way, we could provide the financial conscience in the programming that previous managements were unable or unwilling to impose on the music director. Of course, when our then music director found out about this new arrangment, he immediately resigned. In my mind, it has been a small price to pay. We immediately reworked the entire season this year, taking out pieces that were not selling well and replacing them with pieces from years past that did sell well. Not surprisingly, there were many chestnuts to choose from. Further, the season for next year has been announced and the programming is very appealing. Funny thing is that nobody looks at those works and thinks that the orchestra is dumbing down its programming. Except for the music critics of course. As a result of the changes, both this year and next, we received two $1 million gifts last week and the subscription renewals for next season have set a new record for first week sales. The FPO is well on its way to repairing its broken financial wagon.
Gee, I guess we should have been trying to give the public what they wanted all along. Don't you just hate being relevant? ;-)
My opinion for what it's worth...