PrintPrintThe College of Charleston, the Coastal Community Foundation and the Charleston Regional Alliance for the Arts are planning four forums this month to discuss the resources needed to support a professional orchestra, whether people in Charleston are willing to provide them and what they want in return.
By Ashley Fletcher Frampton
aframpton@scbiznews.com
Published June 21, 2010
As the Charleston Symphony Orchestra works to restructure operations in the wake of a cash shortage that halted performances this spring, a group of business and community leaders are inviting a public conversation about the symphony’s future.
The College of Charleston, the Coastal Community Foundation and the Charleston Regional Alliance for the Arts are planning four forums this month to discuss the resources needed to support a professional orchestra, whether people in Charleston are willing to provide them and what they want in return.
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| Crowds gather in the Gaillard Municipal Auditorium during the Spoleto Festival USA 2010. (Photo/Leslie Halpern) |
After the forums, scheduled for June 16, 21 and 22, the groups plan to publish recommendations that can help the Charleston Symphony Orchestra find an operating model that matches community support.
Those involved say there’s more at stake than beautiful music. They say jobs and economic development are tied to the strength of the region’s performing arts.
Meanwhile, the question of how the symphony can raise the money it needs for operations has become intertwined with a new fundraising proposal of a much larger scale. Charleston Mayor Joe Riley announced plans in early June for renovation of the symphony’s primary performance venue, Gaillard Municipal Auditorium, at a cost of $142 million.
Of that total, Riley is looking for $51 million in private donations to match an anonymous gift of $20 million. Riley has said feasibility studies show the fundraising effort is possible.
That leaves some symphony musicians and supporters with questions.
“If the city can fundraise $70 million over a few years, how can it be so impossible for the Charleston Symphony Orchestra to raise about $2 million on an annual basis?” said Ryan Leveille, a symphony musician and spokesman for the Players Association of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra.
“It’s not that the money isn’t there,” Leveille said. “We think that what’s going on with the Gaillard shows that it is there and it needs to be raised.”
Questions like Leveille’s are relevant to the discussion about the symphony’s future, said Nella Barkley, chairwoman of the Charleston Regional Alliance for the Arts, a group that has been organized this year, in part, to help arts groups that want to improve their fundraising and development efforts. Barkley is also a member of the steering committee for the public forums.
“Those questions have to be answered,” she said.
“That’s an enormous amount of money,” she said of the mayor’s fundraising goal, “and it has to be for more than Spoleto (Festival USA) for three weeks.”
Business and the arts
College of Charleston President George Benson, co-chairman of the steering committee for the forums, said the effort came together after a conversation he had with Ted Legasey, president of the board of directors for the Charleston Symphony Orchestra.
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| College of Charleston President George Benson. |
Benson said part of the college’s mission is to foster discussions about improving the community. Beyond that mission, Benson said the health of the college is tied to the health of the arts.
Symphony musicians teach students, he said, and the symphony is important to students, faculty and staff who choose to come to the College of Charleston.
“They want to live in a rich environment,” Benson said.
Blackbaud President and CEO Marc Chardon, another co-chairman of the steering committee, said recruiting employees from “off” is one of the key business challenges in Charleston. Performing arts are among the factors that job candidates and companies consider when deciding whether to uproot themselves and their families and relocate to Charleston.
“People ask themselves, ‘Is the city inward-facing or a citizen of the world?’ ” Chardon said in an e-mail. “ ‘What educational and cultural opportunities does it afford our children?’ ‘Is the community open and welcoming to people like me?’ ”
Chardon, who said he grew up with symphonic music because two of his grandparents were professional cellists, described the public forums as an opportunity to help re-forge a strong bond between the Lowcountry and its orchestra.
He said he agreed to help lead the public forums at the request of Benson, Legasey and George Stevens, president of the Coastal Community Foundation.
Many people in the community are passionate about what the orchestra could be and should be, Chardon said, and some feel their views are not being heard. The public forums provide a chance for them to be part of the conversation.
“In its truest form, it’s research to find out if a symphony in Charleston is a viable option, or some adaptation of a symphony,” said Christine Beddia, spokeswoman for the Coastal Community Foundation,
Barkley said she hopes to engage a wider audience for the symphony, and that could mean different types of performances and offerings. She said she looks forward to hearing the public’s thoughts on that.
“You can’t expect the same people to be giving forever,” she said. “You’ve got to broaden the constituency eventually.”
Waning community support
Although the orchestra’s financial crisis peaked in March amid a persistent economic downturn, its leaders say funding challenges predate the recession. Board president Legasey has said the Charleston Symphony Orchestra has failed to meet its operating budget for the past nine or 10 years.
This year, that budget was set at $2.4 million. Fundraising and sponsorships represents about 55% of the orchestra’s budget, with ticket sales bringing in 35% and grants accounting for 10%.
Legasey has said that fundraising is the source of the symphony’s troubles. Its top 10 donors contributed a combined $680,000 last year, and this year those contributions fell to about $253,000.
No one from the Charleston Symphony Orchestra is serving on the steering committee for the forums, which Barkley said is by design to avoid polarization. But Legasey said the committee’s recommendation will play a critical role as his organization moves forward.
“We rely on the support of the entire community, and these sessions will be instrumental in finding out exactly what the community is willing to support,” Legasey said in a statement.
Legasey has said that going forward, the orchestra could utilize fewer full-time musicians, relying instead on musicians contracted for each performance. That model, called per-service, comes with lower costs but can affect the quality of musicians available to play.
Musicians, too, have said a move toward per-service wages would threaten the quality of music and potentially their ability to continue working here.
Leveille, the players association spokesman, said he is skeptical about the impact that recommendations from this month’s public forums will have. He said the symphony has commissioned studies in the past and hasn’t followed all of the recommendations.
Leveille said it appears the orchestra’s management is looking for a report that backs up its desire to implement a per-service model.
“The Charleston Symphony Orchestra has certainly undertaken a fair amount of internal and external studies over the past few years,” Leveille said. “That reality is cause for a little bit of skepticism on our part. They’ve got reports. I guess another one won’t hurt.”
One recommendation Leveille said has been made but not followed is the hiring of a development director. The position has been vacant for several years, and Leveille and other musicians blame the vacancy for much of the fundraising trouble the orchestra has faced recently.
Legasey has said the orchestra hasn’t been able to find a qualified candidate for the job.
Leveille also pointed to high turnover in the executive director position as an ongoing problem.
Barkley, too, highlighted the lack of a development director as an obvious hindrance for the symphony in raising needed funds. Acknowledging the gap between what Riley plans to raise for the Gaillard renovation and the problems the symphony has faced, she said, “Either they haven’t been asking, or they haven’t been asking right, or they haven’t been treating their past donors in a way that they want to continue to give, or haven’t been giving them evidence that funding has been used wisely.”
She hopes the public forums can help change that.
“With some strategic help and a different point of view, I would hope an organization like this could get itself together and be able to make a coherent appeal with a promise that the funds could be used wisely,” Barkley said.
No matter what the Charleston Symphony Orchestra decides to do in the future, Leveille said the management is still under a contract with the musicians union through 2012. The union has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board asserting that the March shutdown constitutes an illegal lockout under that contract.
In May, the musicians union rejected a one-year wage agreement for a scaled-back 2010-2011 season, which the board planned to offer while it goes about restructuring.
Union representatives said the wages were too low; orchestra officials said they were offering full-time benefits for part-time work. The disagreement has left the fate of the interim season unclear.
Gaillard proposal
Riley’s recently announced plan to renovate the Gaillard would dramatically change the outside and inside of the hulking 1960s building.
The plan would reduce seating from about 2,700 to 1,800, which Riley said would make the performance hall more intimate and improve acoustics. Plans also call for updates to the auditorium’s exhibition hall and construction of new city offices on the site.
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| The Gaillard Municipal Auditorium during the recent Spoleto Festival USA 2010. (Photo/Leslie Halpern) |
Riley has alluded to the need for an overhaul in the past couple of years, but in a presentation to the community on June 2, he said now is the time to move forward because construction costs are more than 20% less than they were three years ago and they’ll likely rise again in the future.
Scaling back the number of seats in the performance hall might seem counterintuitive, but Riley said that the seats are rarely utilized and that the vast size makes the space unsuitable for smaller performances.
Riley said the city pays about $750,000 annually to rent office space throughout the peninsula for several departments. He said the money saved would go toward the cost of renovating the auditorium and adding city-owned offices on site.
The city has identified half of the $142 million cost from various sources, Riley said, and is looking to private donors for the other half.
Leveille said most musicians welcome the plan to improve acoustics and to reduce the number of seats and reorganize them, as well as other planned changes to the Gaillard Auditorium.
“I don’t think you’d find anyone who would disagree on those things,” he said. “Of course, the timing is certainly a question.”
During Riley’s presentation about the updates, a musician gave voice to that question, asking about the timing of a performance hall renovation when there could be no symphony to perform there.
Riley said he hoped the issues threatening the organization could be resolved. He said the Charleston Symphony Orchestra needs a great space in which to perform.
The symphony, Riley said, “is one of the reasons we are here.”
Spoleto as a model
Riley’s presentation fell in the middle of the annual Spoleto Festival USA, a 17-day performing arts festival that has drawn high-profile acts from around the world to Charleston since 1977.
Barkley said the festival’s lasting success, in the same community that is struggling to support a local professional symphony, is a result of good leadership.
“The festival is extremely well-run,” she said. “It has a solid board. They let the managers manage, and they don’t get involved in artistic decisions. The board knows its role, and management knows its role. I think that’s a very good model which can be emulated on a smaller scale.”
The leadership of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra has for years struggled with funding, a seemingly intractable problem, she said.
“Over the years, I think the roles have gotten pretty mixed up,” she said. “I don’t fault anyone for devotion, but it may be time to turn the page and make a fresh start.”
Reach Ashley Fletcher Frampton at 843-849-3129.
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