San Antonio Symphony News and Archive

Symphony's on even keel, but hull leaks




From the San Antonio Express-News 12/19/99

By Mike Greenberg



The good news to report from a briefing with San Antonio Symphony leaders last week is that most of the news was ... well, kind of dull.

Symphony board Chairman Kenny Wilson and Executive Director John Binkley invited me to Wilson's office - he's president of Bank of America San Antonio - for a progress report on the symphony's stabilization after near-bankruptcy last year.

In a nutshell, things are going well in many respects, though the long-term picture is still clouded by a surfeit of empty seats.

• The Arthur Andersen accounting firm has taken over the orchestra's financial management and cleaned up the books. "For the first time we have a financial statement we know with absolute certainty is accurate and complete," Wilson said.

• "If historical giving patterns are maintained, and if some (anticipated) gifts and challenge grants come our way, and assuming we can match a challenge grant, we think we can end in the black this year," Binkley said.

• The board of directors - reconstituted last year as a compact group of representatives of major businesses, foundations and the musicians (all "stakeholders") - is being expanded slightly to bring in representatives of the Symphony League and a newly formed advisory council.

• Chicago Symphony President Henry Fogel is serving as an informal mentor to Binkley, who had not run a symphony orchestra before taking the job last spring. A new orchestra manager, Larry Fried, has been enticed from the Little Orchestra Society of New York, on Fogel's recommendation.

  Fogel also helped set up the process for seeking a successor to music director Christopher Wilkins, who steps down at the end of next season.

• Next month the symphony launches a new "Outside the Loop" program to take the orchestra to Boerne, Bandera, New Braunfels and outlying parts of San Antonio, including the Little Flower Basilica, on the West Side, and Oak Hills Church of Christ, near The Dominion.

  A lot of potential listeners resist coming downtown to hear the orchestra. "If they won't come to us, we'll take the orchestra to them," Binkley said.

  It's a great deal for the outlying areas. Local sponsors provide the venue, sell the tickets and distribute the box-office revenue to community arts groups.

  The symphony, which intends to absorb the modest out-of-pocket costs with help from grants, gets nothing - except good will and close-up exposure to potential subscribers and donors.

  Wilson said he hopes in future seasons to expand the effort into the Rio Grande Valley, where the symphony used to have a big annual presence, and Mexico.

• Ticket sales remain the top problem. Most concerts play to half-empty houses, and sales this season are flat.

  The experience of other orchestras has been that it takes three seasons to "rebuild the confidence of subscribers" after a shut-down such as the San Antonio Symphony experienced last year, Binkley said.

  Not that sales were much better before the shut-down. If the orchestra had been selling at 95 percent of capacity two seasons ago, it wouldn't have had a financial crisis to begin with.

  The poor sales are especially galling in view of the fact that the orchestra is playing at a consistently high level, and Wilkins is in superb form. He and the orchestra deserve to be heard.

  But maybe sales aren't the issue at all. Maybe the symphony needs to think about a completely new business model.

  But that's the subject of next Sunday's column.

  

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