San Antonio Symphony News and Archive

City aid is key to orchestra future




by David Hendricks

from the San Antonio Express News 1/18/98



Guest conductor Benjamin Zander of Boston was desperate for a towel at intermission backstage at the Majestic Theater, having just led the San Antonio Symphony in Beethoven's Fifth.

Finding two fresh towels under his baggage on the dressing room sofa, he quickly mopped his face. But as he began giving a short, highly irregular intermisson interview, the beads of sweat popped out again.

"Look at me directly when I say this," Zander insisted passionately. "This (the San Antonio Symphony) is a great cultural institution of the country. The city mustn't take it for granted. Without support, it won't continue."

Zander backed his words by donating his $5,000 conducting fee to the cash-strapped Symphony Society of San Antonio, which entered the season $1.5 million in debt and came within a hair's breadth last week of missing its payroll.

The symphony board is sweating, too: It needs another $600,000 for payrolls through the end of February.

Dr. Fernando Guerra, a board member, acknowledged last week, "We're very close" to losing the orchestra.

Financial problems are not new for the symphony. But officials now propose a dramatic- and, they hope, permanent- fix.

In interviews with the San Antonio Express-News last week, symphony leaders revealed a sweeping new plan that includes shedding hopes for a new $20 million hall, overhauling the group's relationship with the city-owned Majestic Theater and launching a massive, multiyear endowment campaign.

They also disclosed the group already is reaching out for new national corporate support.

"I believe there is a heightened sense of awareness among the board members that we are in a period of financial crisis," symphony Executive Director David Schillhammer said. "But everyone is extremely optimistic it will be solved and overcome. Our intent is to do it permanently."

Mayor Howard Peak said he was glad to hear the symphony is reordering its priorities and stressed the City Council will take its cue only from the community.

"A communitywide effort will be necessary. That is the symphony's long term hope," Peak said.

The symphony's problems go to the very nature of San Antonio. Unlike its larger cousins in such cities as New York and Chicago, San Antonio's symphony has fewer corporate pockets to tap and must rely more heavily on individual contributions and endowments.

San Antonio is not alone. More than half of the 43 symphonies in the nation are struggling financially.

Last year, the San Diego orchestra- $3 million in debt- disbanded after officials there decided that continuing to operate would be "prolonging the suffering."

In San Antonio, annual fund contributions have reached record levels but remain insufficient. Government support overall has declined.

Concert attendance rose year by year in the early 1990s until the current season, when single-concert sales declined, even though ticket prices stayed flat.

Fees for the Majestic continue to rise, while the symphony's slim endowment of $1 million provides only limited help.

The plan to revive the symphony came after the board hired a development consulting firm, Cargill Associates of Fort Worth, last summer.

Through selected interviews in San Antonio, Cargill found San Antonians deeply appreciate the symphony and are willing to increase contributions for annual operations and the endowment.

But Cargill found the community won't support a capital campaign for a new concert hall, a project that could cost $20 million or more.

As a result, the symphony board adjusted its fund raising goals for the three fiscal years beginning in September.

The annual fund goal will be $4 million each year for a total of $12 million, Schillhammer said.

Only twice has the orchestra raised more than $3 million from private sources: $3.03 million in 1995-96 and $3.32 million in 1996-97. He said the goal is to raise $3.32 million again in 1997-98.

At the same time, the symphony wants to add $5 million to the endowment, bringing the three-year fund-raising total to $17 million.

"We are encouraged by our potential for a capital campaign (for the endowment) as part of a permanent solution to ongoing financial challenges," Schillhammer said last week.

The symphony, with 77 musicians and a 25-member paid staff and operating under a $7 million budget, has other plans to improve financial soundness.

Potentially the most contentious goal involves the Majestic.

The symphony pays $500,000 a year to the Majestic's operator, Arts Center Enterprises. But because ACE, a division of Houston-based PACE, books Broadway musicals at the Majestic, the symphony cannot stage its entire season there. Some concerts this season are being performed at acoustics-poor Laurie Auditorium at Trinity University.

"We realize the community would like to see us stay at the Majestic," Schillhammer said.

However, he said the symphony is re-examining its relationship with City Hall and comparing it with that of other arts organizations.

In the 1990s, city contributions to the symphony have hovered at about $500,000 a year.

When the city cut arts funding last fall, this season's contribution- raised from hotel-motel taxes- was reduced by $80,000 to $430,000.

Schillhammer said that while the symphony receives hotel-motel taxes from the city, it essentially returns that money by using a city-owned facility. That is different, he said, from the way the city funds other arts organizations.

The symphony is studying those arrangements to form a new proposal for the City Council.

"The numbers are not ready yet," Schillhammer said.

"We are not complaining or indicating that anyone is not deserving of it, but we feel that, as the largest full-time professional performing arts organization, that parity is critical for the symphony," he said.

"If museum X gets hotel-motel tax funds and the museum is paid for by the city, then why should the symphony get hotel-motel tax money and then give it back for use of a city-owned facility?" he added.

The board and staff already have begun a quiet effort to persuade civic and business leaders to encourage the City Council to reduce the cost of the symphony's home.

Peak said he'll listen.

"I would be willing to see if we could do something, based on information I have not seen. Hopefully, that evaluation will provide that information," the mayor said.

In 1994, a committee appointed by then-Mayor Nelson Wolff affirmed the value of the symphony to the city.

It recommended the symphony cut costs and serve its various communities better. It also recommended the city maintain its support at the $500,000 level and "furnish a truly cost-free venue."

"The committee's prescriptions are as relevant today as they were before," said Dr. John Howe, president of the University of Texas Health Science Center, who chaired the 1994 committee.

"Now, more than ever, we need to have this institution a part of the city's future. The symphony has more than met its challenge to the community, including the musical training for children. We see evidence of it every day," Howe said.

Schillhammer said it would be wrong to blame the deficit only on the Majestic. He acknowledged that, partly to compensate for the symphony's displacement durnig the Broadway shows, ACE made improvements to make the Majestic a better home for the orchestra.

Schillhammer said that while he supports Broadway musicals, in most cities the same theater is not used for both types of events.

Many orchestras operate rent-free in municipal-owned halls.

That is the case in Dallas, where the symphony ceased operations for seven months in 1974 because of lack of community support.

Dallas real estate executive Henry S. Miller Jr. led the charge to revive the orchestra, which involved raising $62 million toward a new hall designed by famed architect I.M. Pei.

The Dallas Symphony donated the hall to the city and now uses it rent-free with first choice of dates. Concert hall operating costs, including utilities and ushers, are subsidized by the Dallas City Council.

In San Antonio, the city is the symphony's largest contributor, followed by SBC Communications Inc. at $200,000 a year.

The symphony lost a key contributor in early 1996 with the death of Elizabeth Maddux, who had contributed $2.7 million the previous five years. No Maddux money was budgeted this year.

In 1996, the symphony began an effort to attract national corporate support. The symphony this spring advances that effort as one of nine new orchestras in the 33-member TOPS, or The Orchestra Partner-Ship, based in Chicago.

TOPS seeks national corporation support by offering its combined orchestral audiences as a market segment.

The new orchestras must pay $10,000 to join the fund-raising coalition. The San Antonio Symphony is offsetting that cost by selling its mailing list for $39,000 to an affiliated credit-card program.

Although city funding has fallen, federal support of the San Antonio Symphony has risen, despite a 50 percent cut in congressional funding of the National Endowment for the Arts.

NEA grants of $53,500 in 1995 and 1996 were raised to $60,000 in 1997, Schillhammer said.

"Many orchestras across the nation got zero," he said.

The San Antonio Symphony is being rewarded,he said, because of its outreach to minorities and its programming, especially performances of new pieces by Hispanic resident composers in the past five seasons.

Reducing orchestral pay levels to cut the deficit is unlikely. At $28,300 for starting basic pay, the San Antonio Symphony ranks below orchestras serving similar size markets such as the Utah Symphony, with a starting minimum salary of $38,532, and Columbus, Ohio, where yearly pay starts at $41,262.

What if the symphony did go silent? Besides the classical and popular music staged by the orchestra, the six weeks of educational Young People's Concerts for school children would cease.

The school concerts, which reach about 160,000 children yearly, encourage participation in school band, orchestras and chorus, said David Mairs, resident conductor.

"It has been demonstrated that kids taking music in school score higher on tests, including college entrance exams, than those who do not," Mairs said.

The symphony has an economic development factor, too.

"I can't say a company would not come here if we didn't have a symphony, but I know that it is one of the quality-of-life items that companies look for," said Mario Hernandez, San Antonio Economic Development Foundation president.

"So much of economic development is the image of the city as being pro-business and having a healthy economy," Hernandez added. "To have a good economy, you have to have a good quality of life, so we would not want anything occuring like the losing of a symphony that damages our image. The most important thing is that we continue to have an image as a major city with all the amenities that coporations look for."



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