ResurgentResurgentResurgentResurgentOrchestras

Alb

uque

rque

Ho

nolu

lu

ResurgentH

ono

lulu

ResurgentS

yrac

use

Bra

d G

oda

1

2

3

71

by Chester Lane Four years ago, bankruptcies shuttered orchestras in Albuquerque, Honolulu, and Syracuse. In all three places the music has returned, affi rming the essential demand for symphonic music in American cities.ResurgentResurgentResurgentby Chester LaneResurgentby Chester Lane

What happens when a major U.S. city loses its principal orchestra? It’s a diffi cult question to answer, because one would be hard pressed to fi nd a major city in the nation that has permanently lost one. An observer of U.S.

orchestral activity over many decades will fi nd that the fl agship orchestras—those bearing the name of a city, state, or region, and serving as the main provider of symphonic music for that popula-tion—may stop playing for a period of months due to fi nancial diffi culties or a labor impasse. � ey may regroup or downsize, ad-justing to economic realities, the capacity of their communities to support them, or a redefi ned mission. � e organization’s name, and to some extent its geographic identity, may shift from a city (Birmingham, Charleston, Denver, Minneapolis, Muskegon, New Orleans, Oakland) to a state or region (Alabama, West Vir-ginia, Colorado, Minnesota, West Michigan, Louisiana, Oakland East Bay). A restructured “symphony orchestra” may come back as a “philharmonic,” or vice versa. But the music keeps going.M

arc

Ram

os

1 Guest conductor Victor Yampolsky and the New Mexico Philharmonic acknowledge applause at Albuquerque’s Popejoy Hall on February 25, 2012, during the orchestra’s fi rst full season. The NM Phil was formed in the wake of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra’s demise in May 2011.

2 Members of the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra’s low brass section (from left: Jason Byerlotzer, Michael Maier, Jared Lantzy, T. J. Ricer) perform in the HSO’s “Star Wars and Beyond” pops concert led by Stuart Chafetz last March at Honolulu’s Neal Blaisdell Concert Hall.

3 Symphoria, the new orchestra based in Syracuse, N.Y., presented free concerts in half a dozen Central New York communities last spring and summer prior to launching its second full season. This performance took place at Beard Park in Fayetteville under guest conductor Travis Newton.

Mar

ti R

eed

symphony F A L L 2 0 1 472

Hand-wringing over the “death of or-chestras” was especially noticeable during the 2010-11 season, as the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Louisville Orchestra ini-tiated reorganization plans under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, and three other prominent organizations—the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, based in Al-buquerque, and the Honolulu and Syracuse symphony orchestras—filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and ceased operations entirely. In each of these cities where the orchestra actually went away, symphonic music has come back under the aegis of a new organi-zation, with a different operating model and fresh leadership.

“�e resilience of orchestras cannot be overstated,” says Jesse Rosen, president and CEO of the League of American Orches-tras. “Our most recent data from IRS 990 returns shows that over a ten-year period, from 2001 to 2010, the universe of orches-tras in America has grown, not shrunk. �rough a combination of new orchestras getting started and established ones coming back, the field remains vibrant.” �e recent resurgence of orchestral life in Albuquerque, Honolulu, and Syracuse—which has been spearheaded to a large extent by the musi-cians themselves—is just the latest evidence of the durability of the orchestral institution in America.

Players Take the ReinsAlbuquerque, the capital of New Mexico and its largest city (about 556,000 residents, with a metro population of nearly a mil-lion), had been served by the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra for 79 years when

Grant Cooper (West Virginia), Andrew Grams (Elgin), and Philip Mann (Arkan-sas). And in the same spirit of collegiality among players that has characterized the NM Phil since its inception, the orchestra’s current executive director is Marian Tanau, a Romanian-born musician who has been a member of the Detroit Symphony Orches-tra’s violin section since 1995.

Hawaii 5-0With the closing of the Honolulu Sym-phony Orchestra in 2011, the nation lost one of its oldest orchestras—the HSO had been founded in 1900, two years after Ha-waii’s annexation by the United States, 59 years before it achieved statehood—and Hawaii was suddenly the only state with-out a classical symphonic ensemble. (Ha-waii’s only other professional orchestra is the Maui Pops, some 70 miles to the north in Kihei, on the island of Maui; also go-ing strong is the Honolulu-based Hawaii

that organization shut down in 2011. (�e orchestra was originally known as the Sym-phony Civic Orchestra and was founded by the Albuquerque Rotary Club in 1932, dur-ing the depths of the Great Depression.) In response to the orchestra’s demise, NMSO musicians and community members formed a new organization called the New Mexico Philharmonic. Two days after the NMSO’s May 2011 bankruptcy filing, according to an account by Winthrop Quigley in the Al-buquerque Journal, one of its musicians, cel-list Carla Lehmeier-Tatum, paid a visit to Richard Berry, the mayor of Albuquerque. Berry, who had once played the trombone, “told her that a great city simply has to have an orchestra.” �e mayor praised the New Mexico Philharmonic’s formation and host-ed a black-tie fundraising gala in support. �e fledgling organization, Quigley reports, “performed some of the old NMSO’s en-gagements in its first few months, including a zoo concert that attracted 2,600 people.” For 2011-12, the new orchestra rolled out its own inaugural season.

In May of 2014, NM Phil President Maureen R. Baca—a longtime Albuquer-que resident and arts donor who heads a consulting firm called �e Computing Cen-ter—told Symphony that the orchestra was “currently in the process of developing the next stage of our strategy to take the NM Phil into its fourth and fifth successful sea-sons, 2014 to 2016, with a full professional orchestra. �e NM Phil will be perform-ing about 50 classical and popular con-certs for both regular audiences and public school children.” �is season the orchestra will present twelve Saturday evening con-

certs (eight classical, four pops) at Popejoy Hall, home of the old NMSO. Albuquerque’s National Hispanic Cultural Center will host four additional concerts on Sunday after-noons (with programming that is not specifically tailored to the Hispanic community). As yet the NM Phil has no music director, but its guest-con-ductor lineup for 2014-15 includes numerous music directors from other U.S. orchestras, including Ted-dy Abrams (Louisville),

Guest conductor Junichi Hirokami led the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra on April 5 and 6 of this year in Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel and Der Rosenkavalier Suite; the concert’s first half featured Anne Akiko Meyers in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2.

Bra

d G

oda

Cou

rtes

y D

etro

it S

ymph

ony

Orc

hest

ra

Marian Tanau, executive director of the New Mexico Philharmonic, is also a violinist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

73a m e r i c a n o r c h e s t r a s . o r g

Youth Symphony, which serves 700 stu-dents throughout the state.) Prior to the Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing, there had been talk of a less drastic solution, a Chap-ter 11 reorganization that would allow the HSO to stay in business. With that in mind, a Symphony Exploratory Commit-tee made up of business and community

leaders recruited by the musicians contact-ed veteran manager Steve Monder, who had retired as president of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 2008 after run-ning it for 37 years. Monder was invited to come out to Hawaii to study the possibili-ties and recommend solutions. “�ey were looking for ways to reestablish the orches-tra,” he says. “�e deadline for submitting a new organizational plan [under Chapter 11] was approaching, and our initial con-versation was about that.” Once in Hawaii, Monder says, he “talked to respected and highly visible community leaders about coming up with a plan. By that time the legal issues had changed and the old or-chestra was no more.”

Among the “respected and visible lead-ers” Monder spoke with were Vicky Cay-etano, who had served as Hawaii’s First Lady from 1994 to 2002 and for a time as a board member of the old Honolulu Symphony; Oswald Stender, a trustee of the state’s Office of Hawaiian Af-fairs, which handles issues affecting Na-tive Hawaiians; and Paul Kosasa, CEO of Honolulu-based ABC Stores—a conve-nience-store chain catering to resort trav-

elers—and a leading member of the local resident Japanese-American community. Kosasa recalls that during this period he also spoke with Marsha Schweitzer, a bas-soonist from the orchestra. “She called me up and said, ‘As a business person maybe you can help us.’ So I did. As the orchestra entered into bankruptcy, its assets—mostly the library and a couple of pianos—went up for auction. My private foundation, the Kosasa Foundation, was the sole bidder, and we purchased those assets so we could keep them in Hawaii.”

In April of 2011 the Symphony Ex-ploratory Committee announced that an agreement had been reached with mem-bers of the now-defunct Honolulu Sym-phony that provided for a new salaried orchestra of 64 musicians. �e successor organization, known as the Hawaii Sym-phony Orchestra, was announced two months later by conductor JoAnn Falletta, whom the committee had engaged as ar-tistic advisor. (Falletta is music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and appears widely as a guest conductor.) �e Hawaii Symphony made its concert debut in March of 2012. Kosasa was subsequent-ly elected chair of the Hawaii Symphony’s board.

Monder says that as he looked at what kind of symphonic organization Honolulu could sustain, the question arose: “How is this orchestra going to work better than the old one? We want an orchestra, and this orchestra is very good, but can we af-ford it?” �e Honolulu Symphony had had a 32-week season, including six weeks of Hawaii Opera �eatre services and one for the annual Nutcracker performances with Hawaii State Ballet. “We came up with something that looked a lot differ-ent, had a lot more concessions, and a lot fewer weeks for the musicians,” Monder explains. “Everyone understood that the old orchestra had gone away. We had to reestablish confidence in the community that this new orchestra would be an ongo-ing enterprise that deserved their support.” �e sixteen-week inaugural season that began in March 2012 included services for Honolulu’s opera and ballet compa-nies. “We took those out of our contract, and now sub-contract musicians separately from our master agreement—which is a way of being responsible to our supporters;

Hawaii Symphony Orchestra Executive Director Jonathan Parrish and conductor JoAnn Falletta, who has served as artistic advisor to the new organization and will lead two HSO concerts in the 2014-15 season

symphony F A L L 2 0 1 474

it wasn’t our place to guarantee those opera and ballet weeks. But many musicians can still count on the additional work.” �e Hawaii Symphony Orchestra’s guaranteed season is now twelve weeks, with 20 per-service players hired to supplement the salaried core of 64.

�e new organization took a major step forward last November with the hiring of Jonathan Parrish as executive direc-tor. (Monder, who had served as interim president during the startup, stayed on as senior adviser.) Parrish brings a wealth of knowledge to the job, having not only played horn in both the Hawaii Sympho-ny Orchestra and its predecessor but man-aged a successful concert series, Honolulu’s Chamber Music Hawaii. He had been in-

timately involved with the old orchestra, both as spokesman for the musicians during the bankruptcy proceed-ings and as a key mem-ber of the Symphony Exploratory Commit-tee. Monder, who had recommended Parrish’s appointment as execu-

tive director to the board, notes that as a longtime former player he’s “passionate about the orchestra. �ere aren’t many people on the island”—Oahu, where the city of Honolulu is situated—“who have the kind of experience necessary to run the orchestra, hold it together, deal with all the issues. Honolulu is different than a typical mainland city, and Jonathan understands those differences.”

�e orchestra has slowly been building professional staff, including the appoint-ment of Julie Montgomery to serve as artistic administrator from her home base in the continental U.S. (“the mainland,” as many Hawaiians call it) where she for-merly worked for Monder at the Cincin-

nati Symphony. Falletta has continued to help the orchestra line up guest artists and conductors, and will lead a concert featur-ing Beethoven’s Ninth on December 28 as well as the season finale next June, which includes the world premiere of a concerto by Byron Yasui featuring an authentically Hawaiian instrument, the ukulele, with Jake Shimabukuro as soloist.

Early in June of this year Parrish was pleased to report that the orchestra had sold dozens of full subscriptions for 2014-15, even though no repertoire, guest artists, or dates had yet been announced. Another positive sign for the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra is the new two-year contract with its musicians that took effect on July 1 of this year. In announcing it to the press in mid-July, Parrish said the $3.3 mil-lion orchestra was expecting to “close the books this season with a balanced budget.”

A Regional EmbraceSyracuse, N.Y., with a current popula-tion of about 144,000, was relatively late among U.S. cities of its size in acquiring a flagship symphonic ensemble: it was only in 1961 (when city residents numbered

On July 26, a large crowd attended Symphoria’s concert at Fort Stanwix in Rome, N.Y., part of the city’s annual Honor America Days celebration. On July 24, Symphoria musicians Roy Smith, John Raschella, Ben David Aronson, Christopher Rosmarin, and Matthew Halbert performed with the orchestra in Skaneateles, N.Y.

Mar

c R

amos

Mar

c R

amos

75a m e r i c a n o r c h e s t r a s . o r g

about 216,000) that the Syracuse Sym-phony Orchestra made its debut, as a com-munity orchestra performing a four-con-cert season at a local high school. By 1966 the SSO was sufficiently established as a professional organization to qualify for a $1 million grant from the Ford Founda-tion, as part of the massive program rolled out by the foundation that year allocating $80.2 million—the bulk of it endowment support requiring matching funds—to 61 U.S. orchestras. Like many such organi-zations, the Syracuse Symphony suffered growing pains and financial setbacks over the years, and its troubles eventually led to the orchestra’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing in April of 2011.

�e plan that emerged for reinstating an orchestra in Syracuse came from an orga-nization called Musical Associates of Cen-tral New York. Among its key supporters were Vicki Feldman, who had led fund-raising efforts for the old Syracuse Sym-phony Association; James Tapia, director of orchestral activities at Syracuse Univer-sity and former conductor of the Syracuse Symphony Youth Orchestra; and horn player Jon Garland, who had long been a member of the Syracuse Symphony and, like many of his colleagues, had put down roots in the community as an orches-tra professional and music educator. �e name that Musical Associates of Central New York came up with for the new organization was Symphoria, and the tag line was “Music in the key of CNY.”

Symphoria made its de-but—and revealed its new name—on December 14, 2012, at a holiday concert in Syracuse’s Crouse Hinds �e-atre, home of the old SSO. On the podium was composer-conductor Sean O’Loughlin, whose new composition Sym-phoria opened the program. Also unveiled that evening was a winter-spring 2013 sea-son that included three mas-terworks concerts, two pops concerts, and a young people’s concert; two afternoon Casual Concerts at St. Paul’s Epis-copal Church; and a “Spark Concert” at Syracuse’s Ever-

son Museum of Art, the first of what was to become an innova-tive series of site-specific con-certs planned in collaboration with the host venue.

Garland says that Musi-cal Associates of Central New York evaluated many differ-ent names for the new orga-nization, “and used a firm that helped us derive information from brainstorming. Sympho-ria is an experiential name. It suggests euphoria. �ere’s something unique and special about live music, and that’s one of the things the name at-tempts to capture.”

As a startup enterprise, Symphoria has a budget of around $1.5 million. But with no municipal association to its name—and the acronym for Central New York in its tag-line—Symphoria is evidently aiming for geographic reach beyond the city of Syracuse. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the new organization is that it’s structured as a cooperative. Gar-land now plays in the orchestra while also performing a variety of staff functions and

sitting on the board. “�e musicians are the members of the corporation,” he says. “It’s a core of 52 musicians, about 40 of whom were in the old SSO.” (Extras are hired to fill out the instrumentation for any given concert.) �e core musicians, says Garland, “have a significant role in governance, and also in se-lecting board members. �e plan is to have musicians be a minority on the board, but at the moment it’s almost even-ly split between musicians and community members.

“�e old orchestra paid a salary that folks could sur-vive on,” Garland continues. “Right now the compensa-tion we’re able to provide is such that players really have to find additional employ-ment, and they’re doing that

in a variety of different ways. But we’re not per-service. Symphoria tries to pro-vide some stable and regular compensation to its core employees. And we do provide health insurance benefits, because we’re trying to retain people in our community as resident professionals, available as a re-source not just for the orchestra but for our community as a whole.”

Catherine Underhill, a veteran arts ad-ministrator who had spent several years managing the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, was engaged as Symphoria’s man-aging director in September of last year. A Syracuse native, she says she “watched the demise of the Syracuse Symphony from 2,000 miles away. It was really heartbreak-ing. And eventually when I was presented with this opportunity I was pleased to do it. �is is a professional resident orchestra that wants to be part of the economic en-gine that’s driving a recovery here in Syra-cuse.”

�is summer under her supervision, numerous communities in Syracuse and the surrounding area—Cazenovia, Ham-ilton, Fayetteville, Oswego, Skaneateles, Rome—got a taste of Symphoria through

“We’re not per-service,” says Symphoria’s Jon Garland, who now plays in the orchestra while performing a variety of staff functions and sitting on the board. “Symphoria provides health benefits and stable compensation to its core employees. We’re trying to maintain people in our community as resident professionals.”

Symphoria Music Director Designate Lawrence Loh

Rob

Dav

idon

Mar

c R

amos

77a m e r i c a n o r c h e s t r a s . o r g

a series of programs by the full orches-tra and its brass quintet, all presented free of charge through a combination of sponsorships and benefit events. �ese performances included a July 25 season preview concert at Everson Plaza prior to an outdoor screening in the Everson Museum of Art’s “Film Under the Stars” series. Symphoria will open the season on September 27 with a “Music of �ree Centuries” concert (Beethoven, Prokofiev, Torke) led by Lawrence Loh, who has been tapped as music director effective in 2015-16 and is leading Symphoria in four programs this season. Currently resi-dent conductor of the Pittsburgh Sym-phony Orchestra and music director of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philhar-monic—a post he will retain—Loh plans to relocate to the Syracuse area with his wife and family.

CHESTER LANE is senior editor of Symphony.

The League of American Orchestras would like to thank the following sponsors for their support of the 2014 National Conference. We look forward to seeing you in Cleveland!

To inquire about sponsorship opportunities for the 2015 Conference taking place May 27–29, please contact Steve Alter at 646 822 4051 or salter@americanorchestras.org.

Akustiks

ArtsMarketing Services Inc.

ASCAP

Aspen Leadership Group

Boomerang Carnets l CIB

Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI)

Boeing

CCS

Classical Movements, Inc.

Colbert Artists Management

Columbia Artist Management Inc. (CAMI)

DCM, Inc. – Teleservices & Consulting for Non-Profi ts

Fisher Dachs Associates – Theatre Planning and Design

Frank...A Musical Journey

Go! Shuttle Express

Ann Hampton Callaway

InstantEncore

JRA Fine Arts- Annie Moses Band

MAGUSA Logistics

Music Publishers Association of the United States

Patron Technology, Inc.

SD&A Teleservices, Inc.

Space Needle Corp.

TALASKE I Sound Thinking

Threshold Acoustics

Triplet Light from Triplet Music Prod-ucts Inc.

V-Cube USA

Video Ideas Productions, Inc.

Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation1. Publication Title: Symphony2. Publication Number: 0271-2687

3. Filing Date: 8/26/14

4. Issue Frequency: Quarterly

5. Number of Issues Published Annually: 4

6. Annual Subscription Price: $25

7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publi-cation: League of American Orchestras, 33 West 60th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10023-7905

Contact Person: Mike Rush

Telephone: 646-822-4017

8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher: 33 West 60th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10023-7905

9. Publisher: Jesse Rosen. Editor: Robert Sandla. Managing Editor: Jennifer Melick. 33 West 60th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10023-7905

10. Owner: League of American Orchestras, 33 West 60th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10023-7905

11. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or Holding 1 Percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgages, or Other Securities: None

12. Tax Status: Has Not Changed During Preceding 12 Months

13. Publication Title: Symphony14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: Summer 2014

15. Extent and Nature of Circulation

a. Total Number of

Copies (Net press run) 13,996 14,263

b. Paid Circulation

(1) Mailed Outside-

County Paid

Subscriptions stated

on PS Form 3541 12,725 12,367

(2) Mailed In-County

Paid Subscriptions

stated on PS

Form 3541 0 0

(3) Paid Distribution

Outside the Mails

Including Sales Through

Dealers and Carriers,

Street Vendors, Counter

Sales, and Other Paid

Distribution Outside

USPS 545 1,218

(4) Paid Distribution

by Other Classes of

Mail Through the USPS 0 0

c. Total Paid Distribution 13,270 13,585

d. Free or Nominal Rate

Distribution

(1) Free or Nominal

Rate Outside-County

Copies Included

on PS Form 3541 0 0

(2) Free or Nominal

Rate In-County Copies

Included on PS

Form 3541 0 0

(3) Free or Nominal

Rate Copies Mailed at

Other Classes Through

the USPS 61 74

(4) Free or Nominal

Rate Distribution

Outside the Mail 50 51

e. Total Free or Nominal

Rate Distribution 111 125

f. Total Distribution 13,381 13,710

g. Copies not

Distributed 615 553

h. Total 13,996 14,263

i. Percent Paid 99 99

Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months

No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date

INDEXADVERTISER

continued from page 75 Andersen & Associates, Inc. ................. 67Aspen Leadership Group .................... C2BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) .............. C3Botnari ................................................. 69Broadway Pops International ............... 43CAMI Music ....................................... 42Carnegie Hall Weill Music Institute .... 19CHL Artists, Inc. ................................ C4Classical Kids Live! .............................. 28Classic Concert Productions ................ 39�e Cooking Group ............................... 4Tony DeSare ......................................... 22Michael Flamhaft, Arranger ................. 39Donna Groom ...................................... 63�e Hit Men ........................................ 38Ingenuity Productions .......................... 48JRA Fine Arts....................................... 65Dan Kamin Comedy Concertos ........... 11Ronnie Kole Productions ................40, 62League of American Orchestras ..... 23, 29,

31, 33, 76Hal Leonard ......................................... 12Live and Let Die .................................. 47Les Amis .............................................. 69Glen Morgan ........................................ 57National Arts Strategies ....................... 10Naxos .................................................... 68Will & Anthony Nunziata ................... 49Opera Lafayette .................................... 68Orchestra Underground:

Tech and Techno .............................. 68A Place For Mom ................................. 66R&H Concert Library ........................... 3Marilyn Rosen Presents........................ 51Seattle Symphony ................................. 69John Such Artists’ Management ........... 46�rom Management ............................. 41Turtle Island Quartet ........................... 69Windborne Productions, Inc. ............... 53Word Pros, Inc. ..................................... 57www.symphony.net ................................. 2Yamaha Corporation of America ........... 1Young Concert Artists .......................... 13

Don’t miss a single note!

subscribe to

With vibrant photographs and

timely articles, Symphony is

transforming the way America

thinks about its orchestras.

Hear from the conductors,

musicians, and people on the

inside who are making

innovative choices, provoking

change, and electrifying the

orchestral world.

One year – four printed issues: $25

To subscribe, visit

americanorchestras.org

symphony