Friday, October 19, 2012

Saving American Symphony Orchestras - Round II

The Forbes article Sally posted below invites some comment since it mirrors so many of the current tropes about how to "fix" orchestras (and whether that is fix as in repair and resuscitate, or fix as in "we need to fix the cat so there are no more kittens" is not always clear). So here are some of my comments and post-Bernstein/Walton ramblings to help feed the blog.
First off, you can detect the authoritative and somewhat patronizing tone of the “consultant” who has the answers and is ready to sell them to you. I am glad that the author is an “enthusiastic patron of classical music”, but when someone makes that claim, I would prefer to hear how and why he came to that position, which could potentially provide some valuable insight into attracting and retaining audiences. Some of his casual observations (“the creeping mortality of an aging donor base”) are more worthy of closer examination than the themes he developed for the purpose of selling an article to Forbes (i.e., “stop playing concerts”, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek corrective action illustrated with an over-simplified example of the purported cost-savings). Some interesting statements, but I have to refute several ideas.
Like many “consultants”, he attempts to uniformly apply the principles of the corporate, for-profit business world to the arts. There are certainly areas where some of those principles can be used to great benefit; however, there are at least as many where they cannot. This has less to do with an arts organization being “not-for-profit”, than it has to do with the product generated by an arts organization, in our case, an orchestra.  That product (the concert performance) is ephemeral, but must be made to happen at a fixed point in time while being subject to an extremely high quality standard (the infamous “cost-quality-delivery” triangle thus guarantees you will incur high cost as well). At the end of the evening, the consumer (hopefully) walks out of the hall with a pleasant feeling and vivid memories, and that’s it. There is nothing tangible: the music occurs, resonates, and vanishes under a set of unique circumstances, which is both tremendously exciting and financially problematic. The closest analogy I can think of is a sporting event, like a Braves game, where the framework is fixed and the general outcome is known, but the details vary. But those details are what keep the patrons interested and in attendance. An analysis of the similarities  might be very instructive, but as for comparing the orchestra to a typical corporation producing goods or services – not so much.
With an eye to his Forbes’ reading audience, the author makes the obligatory disparaging remarks about the musicians’ union, erroneously equating it, as do most commentators, with manufacturing trade unions when in fact there is no valid basis of comparison. There are very practical and necessary reasons for both orchestra musicians and orchestra management to work under union rules, and the efficiency of negotiating collectively (if done in good faith) versus on an individual basis when dealing with a large number of employees basically doing the same task is self-evident. I think I’ll just say it: the existence and legitimate operation of a musician’s union should not be detrimental to the financial health of an orchestra – it’s just an easy target.
The ideas of per-concert pay, and of programming to avoid concerts where not all the hired musicians appear for the full concert, derive from the fallacy that when someone shows up to work they are productive for 100% of the time for which they are paid, and that 100% of their time is required to create the product which provides the means to pay them. That is, a direct correspondence is presumed to exist between individual productivity, end product, and compensation. There is a very old profession for which this is possibly true, but it is not a valid relationship anywhere else. In my humble employment, I am supposed to be physically present for a certain number of hours every day. Those hours may be spent frantically trying to make a deadline, answering routine customer inquiries, or sleeping in a meeting (as I'm afraid may have happened this morning). My personal productivity does not occur at a constant rate but in response to what I will call “market forces” that contribute to the overall end product of the business.
The musician gets paid for walking in the door, just like I do. He/she is a part of the process of creating an end product (the concert, see above). So what if the first half of the program only requires strings, brass and percussion but the wind players are in the building waiting to go on-stage for the rafter-buster to follow? The overall product that is being sold is the experience of the concert itself – the considered selection of complementary repertoire that entertains, challenges, and informs the audience. The next logical step if you accept this theory is to pay per measure so that the dastardly union doesn’t drain the coffers on those sneaky tacet movements!
In the end, where is the savings of a strategy which attempts to make a minor differentiation between paying a fixed salary and paying on a per-job basis when you are running a top-notch orchestra that exists to perform a wide range of music on a frequent basis? It’s insignificant when compared to the far greater costs of inefficiently running other parts of the business, as well as failing to appropriately fulfill the non-profit institution’s charter to supplement production revenues with donated income. And why shouldn’t a college-educated, experienced, high-performing professional be able to work under salaried conditions, i.e. to have what the author refers to as “guaranteed work” and its concomitant benefits?
Lastly, the idea that the “community” needs to somehow be “engaged in programming” and have their wishes considered is mostly ridiculous and just indicates that the writer would really, really like to have his own particular wishes considered in his own community. Strong artistic organizations aren’t built on that type of committee input. It would be much better to have a music director with a strong point of view who builds a brand for the organization (as Robert Shaw did with choral music and as I believe was happening with the “Atlanta school”) than to have a vaguely recognizable leadership assemble a rambling season of the Classical Top 40, sub-par pops music, and various musical Twinkie feasts to pander to so-called community “taste”. It’s just another way to dumb-down culture under the presumption that you can somehow please everyone out there in such a way that attendance will magically sky-rocket and all financial problems will be solved. A season-length NPR pledge drive – every season – yay! That may work in the short-term, but what we really need is long-term answers. Thanks to everyone who is working on that!
L.C. – ASOC Alto I #363
BTW, GREAT concert last night, folks – orchestra, chorus, and soloists all. Let’s do it again Saturday!

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