San Antonio Symphony News and Archive

Accord sets stage for symphony play




By Mike Greenberg

from the San Antonio Express News 10/1/98



Just hours from probable bankruptcy, the Symphony Society of San Antonio and its musicians ratified a new three-year collective bargaining agreement Wednesday and prepared to launch the delayed 60th anniversary season.

The revived orchestra is to take the stage at the Majestic Theatre for all-Beethoven concerts Friday and Saturday nights. The administrative staff, laid off Monday, is expected to return to work today.

The pact - which calls for musician salaries to be frozen at last year's base levels for two years, to be followed by a pay raise - will enable the debt-laden symphony to operate within a balanced budget, a precondition for a $5 million rescue package put together by local businesses and the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation.

Symphony board chairman Charlie Lutz thanked banker Tom Frost for recruiting local businesses to increase their gifts to the symphony by a total of $500,000 a year for five years. The resulting $2.5 million is expected to eliminate the orchestra's $2.1 million debt and build a cash reserve.

Lutz also thanked the Kronkosky foundation for pledging $2.5 million over five years to the symphony's depleted endowment fund. That gift is a challenge grant that must be matched by other gifts, Lutz said.

The symphony has been rescued from financial ruin several times in the past 20 years, only to return to debt a few years later. Lutz insisted the story will be different this time.

"What the symphony has accomplished is a five-year plan for permanent financial stability for this orchestra," Lutz said. "It truly represents systemic change.

"Over a five-year period we retire all of the debt that the symphony currently has, we build a $5 million endowment, and we live within our financial capability... This will be a financially viable organization."

The stabilization plan also calls for an exhaustive study of the symphony's operations and for additional fund-raising to fill vacant marketing and development positions.

Although the musicians had publicly demanded replacement of senior administrative staff, no heads are expected to roll immediately. Lutz expressed gratitude to executive director David Schillhammer and his staff for their "dedication to the survival of this orchestra."

One key element in the stabilization plan, developed over the summer, was renegotiation of the musicians' contract one year into a three-year agreement. Contract talks deadlocked in mid-September.

The logjam was broken late Tuesday by a mediation team comprising Fred Zenone, a cellist with the National Symphony in Washington, and Nick Webster, former executive director of the New York Philharmonic.

The labor agreement was ratified Wednesday morning and formally announced that afternoon by Mayor Howard Peak, flanked by an assortment of musical instruments in the City Hall briefing room.

Lutz credited Peak with keeping lines of communication open between symphony management and the musicians.

"Howard did in fact keep us talking during this entire process," Lutz said.

"The musicians were asked to make some difficult concessions, and we did," said flutist Jean Robinson, chairwoman of the musicians' bargaining team. "But we were not willing to compromise the quality of our symphony, and we didn't."

Robinson said the musicians voted "overwhelmingly" to accept the agreement, but she declined to reveal the margin.

"We were facing bankruptcy today, as I understand it," if an agreement were not reached, Robinson said.

The key to the agreement was a tradeoff:

• The musicians accepted a two-year wage freeze at last season's base minimum salary of $732 a week, but pay would balloon to $800 a week in the third year of the agreement, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by the San Antonio Express-News.
• In addition, management acceded to the musicians' demand not to reduce the size of the orchestra below last season's 77 musicians.
• The current season would be shortened by four weeks - the three already lost plus one unpaid vacation week next March - but the remaining two years would revert to the 39-week contract of recent seasons.
• The musicians also would retain three slots on the symphony's board of directors, which is to be restructured and reduced in size from its current 44 members.

Some orchestra positions that were vacated over the summer have not yet been filled. Some musicians who were expecting to play with the orchestra this season left town as concert after concert was canceled.

Music director Christopher Wilkins said he was "not entirely sure who might have left town" or how many musicians would be available for this weekend's concerts, which he will conduct.

Wilkins said he was confident of having enough musicians for this weekend's concerts, and said vacant slots would be filled with one-year contract players for the remainder of the season.

Lutz said the administrative staff would attempt to reschedule concerts that were canceled at the start of the season.



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