San Antonio Symphony News and Archive

Symphony receives a huge gift




Anonymous donation aims to provide orchestra stability

from the Express News 3/30/99

By Mike Greenberg



Two anonymous donors have given nearly $1.2 million to the San Antonio Symphony to help stabilize its finances and directly aid its musicians.

Mayor Howard Peak announced the gifts Monday at City Hall.

A $1 million cash gift from one donor is to be used "for general operations at the discretion of the board of directors," said Charlie Lutz, the symphony's chairman.

Another donor's $175,000 is to be paid as stipends to the symphony's musicians and its music director, Christopher Wilkins.

Each musician on a regular contract is to get $2,000 June 1 and $2,000 June 1, 2000. The conductor is to get $5,000 each year.

The symphony nearly capsized in September under a debt of $2.1 million, not counting 1998-99 season ticket revenues that had been spent the previous spring.

The Kronkosky Charitable Foundation and a group of local corporations offered the symphony $5 million over five years if it could balance its budget, increase giving from other sources and move toward putting advance ticket sales into escrow, among other reforms.

"What (the $1 million gift) may in fact do is enable us to make progress more quickly in relation to our five-year plan," Lutz said.

Since September, Lutz said, the symphony has made "progress" toward reducing its accounts payable. The symphony's payments to the musicians' pension fund are "absolutely current," he said.

Jean Robinson, a flutist and chairman of the orchestra committee representing the musicians, said the stipends would be "extremely helpful, offsetting the financial contribution we made to the continuation of the orchestra."

The musicians agreed in September to a one-year pay freeze at the previous season's base salary of $732 per week and a reduction of four weeks from last season's 39.

"It is the specific desire of these donors that his and her gifts will draw people off the sidelines," Lutz said of the $1.2 million.

"It would be a mistake to suggest that the symphony is out of the woods."

The next major financial goal comes at the end of the season, in June: The symphony must raise $500,000 for its depleted endowment to collect the first of five annual pledges of $500,000 from the Kronkosky Foundation.

"By May 31, we will be close to the first $500,000," Lutz said.

By rule of thumb, Lutz said, an orchestra needs an endowment three times as large as its budget. With a budget of about $6.5 million, the symphony is aiming for a $20 million endowment. The endowment is now slightly more than $1 million.

Lutz also hopes a new executive director will be hired by September to succeed David Schillhammer, who resigned late last year.

"We expect to be looking at candidates in late May or early June," Lutz said.



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