San Antonio Symphony News and Archive

A gift, scorned, not likely to be offered again




By Mike Greenberg

from the San Antonio Express News 8/26/98



The San Antonio Symphony is not alone in misery. Orchestras in middle-sized towns are in trouble all across the country.

Denver, New Orleans, Phoenix, San Diego, Columbus -- all have suffered crises like the one threatening the San Antonio Symphony.

It's possible that, before many years have passed, only 20 or 30 American cities will continue to support full-time professional orchestras. San Antonio, which ranks in the mid-40s in total personal income, can't play in that league except with exceptional community effort.

The question now facing San Antonio is this: What would be the appropriate level of effort to preserve the symphony?

We have three options:

The option favored by the symphony's board and, apparently, by the suits who run businesses, is to find enough resources to keep the symphony alive, but not enough to keep it well.

Actually, not even enough to keep it alive. The musicians, already underpaid even by San Antonio standards, are expected to close half the gap by giving up more than $8,000 a year, apiece, in reduced wages and benefits.

In relative terms, the extra aid that San Antonio's business tycoons are dangling in front of the symphony amounts to small potatoes. Only the working class musicians of the symphony are being asked to make heroic sacrifices.

This option is the cruelest and most wasteful of the three. It assures only a lingering, painful death for the symphony. It betokens contempt for the musicians, the audience and the art form. It seeks to preserve the name and institutional shell of the symphony, but not its artistic reality. It is a strategy of those who don't mind senescent mediocrity.

The second option would be to abandon pretense, throw in the towel and give other arts groups a crack at some of the money that now goes to the symphony.

Only a fraction of the sales and gifts now going to the symphony would be diverted to other arts -- probably less than a third -- but this route at least holds the potential for long-term benefits.

The third option is to do what it takes to preserve both the institution and the artistic gains it has made in recent years.

I don't mean to diminish the huge strides made by such groups as Jump-Start Performance Co. and Magik Children's Theater, but the symphony is today our only major league contender in the performing arts, our spot on the map.

In programming and musicianship, it is probably on top of the third-tier orchestras, most of which have larger budgets, and it can compete with some of the very rich second-tier bands.

Its music director, Christopher Wilkins, is a rare talent. He has made this orchestra a national model for engagement with the regional culture.

San Antonio did nothing to deserve the luminosity the symphony attained during most of last season. It was a gift, the product of a convergence of historical accidents that are not likely to be repeated, especially at the wages the symphony board proposes.

Wonderful gifts impose obligations of care, respect and stewardship on the recipient. In the present case, the obligation is large but not enormous. Other cities of comparable wealth invest far more in the arts than we do.

If the San Antonio Symphony were the scruffy band of a decade ago, it wouldn't matter. The orchestra of today does matter -- not just because it is a symphony orchestra, but because it is among the few American orchestras that are artistically vibrant.

To scorn this gift would be a foolish, shortsighted and immoral act. To treat it with honor would be a wise investment. But do San Antonio's business leaders know the difference?

We'll soon find out.



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