San Antonio Symphony News and Archive

Doctor taking pulse of S.A.'s cultural climate




By Susan Yerkes

from the San Antonio Express News 9/27/98



Dr. Carl Blond, a kidney specialist, is used to grappling with death and disease.

That may explain why he's so calm about his current volunteer job - chairing the Symphony Wine Dinner Oct. 9.

As the city's 60-year-old symphony struggles to survive deep debt, the season's first concerts have been canceled. Business leaders and philanthropists have pulled together new support, but it may still not suffice. Even mediation between musicians and management is hanging fire (it may begin as early as Tuesday). With the second Classical Series concert, an all-Beethoven Fest, nearing, the tension is palpable.

This is the backdrop against which symphony supporters continue their crusade for dollars to keep the symphony afloat.

"My medical partners thought I was nuts," Blond says of his offer to chair the dinner, the highest-ticket event on the Symphony League's annual calendar. So, he says ruefully, did his wife Liesa, a family doctor and busy mom who became de facto co-chair.

Blond believes the city can't afford to lose the symphony.

"You don't want your kids to grow up in a town where there isn't a symphony," he says simply.

So he's hitting up colleagues to buy $250-per-person tickets to the gala dinner in the Parchman Stremmel Galleries at Charles Court, featuring Boudro's menu and, of course, fine wine.

If the symphony's fate isn't set Oct. 10, there may not be much to celebrate. But at least Blond says he can assure doubters that the dinner will go on.

Symphony League President Claire O'Malley says nearly 100 new members have joined the support group since the symphony's debt crisis arose.

"We are still in there trying," she says, adding she expects the wine dinner and Oct. 8 smoker at Morton's to sell out. She also has faith that a new, $30-a-head wine tasting Oct. 10 at the chic Niles Wine Bar will succeed.

The League aims to raise $175,000 for the symphony this year, she says, concerts or no.

Business support is crucial to the symphony now. So is the support of the individual contributors, from CEOs to those who give $10 or less.

Orchestras are thriving some far-sighted cities: Seattle, Houston, Atlanta and others. We can't afford to drop the baton.

"The arts are critical to the economic vitality of our cities," NationsBank CEO Hugh McColl said, kicking off a corporate campaign for Atlanta's magnificent Woodruff Arts Center Sept. 10.

"The arts are good business," he said. "They help attract visitors to town and keep them here."

Perhaps most important, he added, "The arts help kids succeed . . . let them see, many for the first time, their own beauty and the beauty of the world around them."

"To build a community in which we hope to live with one another in peace and prosperity, there should be a vast body of art within the reach of everybody."



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