{"id":516,"date":"2007-11-06T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2007-11-06T13:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/06\/oso-president-responds-to-crosscut-article\/"},"modified":"2007-11-06T00:15:24","modified_gmt":"2007-11-06T07:15:24","slug":"oso-president-responds-to-crosscut-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/06\/oso-president-responds-to-crosscut-article\/","title":{"rendered":"OSO president responds to Crosscut article"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This was forwarded to me by OSO president Elaine Calder – a truncated version will be published at Crosscut.com.]<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/font>Response to: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can Anybody fix the Oregon Symphony?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nStephen Marc Beaudoin
\nCrosscut Seattle
\nFriday, November 2nd<\/sup>, 2007<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

<\/font>Of course it will take more than an endorsement from Thomas Lauderdale to fix the Oregon Symphony. But Thomas is a subscriber to our full classical series, and a classically trained musician who has appeared with the Oregon Symphony as a guest artist and will again in the future. In performances around the world, he generously credits some of Pink Martini\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s success to its early appearances with our Orchestra. He cares passionately about our organization and wants to help. And he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wonderfully tuned in to Portland and Portland audiences. As Beaudoin points out, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the most famous of Portland personalities. Why wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we accept his offer of help?<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s start by geting one simple fact straight: We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been losing audiences \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but not supporters. Our contributed income is higher than ever, thanks in large part to the Miller match, a three-year challenge by the Miller Foundation to our audiences and donors that has greatly increased our donor base. We have many thousands of contributors including some who make six figure gifts annually. We aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Seattle, San Francisco or Los Angeles, but we do have patrons of means, and patrons with heart, who are determined that this Orchestra must survive and flourish.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>And they are determined because this Orchestra is playing for them, week after week, at an exceptionally high standard of performance. No, we aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hip\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as Lauderdale, and not as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153unmistakably Portland\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c whatever that means. But we are Portland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s local orchestra, and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153local\u00e2\u20ac\u009d resonates with Portlanders. We are a band of musicians who live and work in this community, providing classical and popular concerts at the Schnitz, education programs in our schools, teaching and adjudicating, and forming the nucleus and artistic leadership of smaller organizations like Fear No Music and Third Angle. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Under Carlos Kalmar our classical programming has broadened greatly. As Assistant Principal Viola, Charles Noble, points out in his blog (nobleviola.com\/wordpress) subscriptions were falling even in DePreist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s final seasons, with wall-to-wall Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. In the first years of Carlos\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tenure, the Oregon Symphony has performed music by Benjamin Britten, Steven Mackey, Gy\u00c3\u00b6rgy Ligeti, John Adams, Bohuslav Martinu, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Harrison Birtwistle, Luciano Berio, Henri Dutilleux and Alban Berg, among others.\u00c2\u00a0 Many of these composers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 works had never before been performed by the Oregon Symphony in its history. Everyone has an opinion on programming and every orchestra will be too conservative or too adventurous for some of its patrons and critics, all of the time.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Audiences numbers are crucial though, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re working to reverse the damage of the past few seasons. I use the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153damage\u00e2\u20ac\u009d advisedly. Change is essential for the continued vitality of any organization, but some of the changes in recent seasons were ill-advised or insensitively handled. And at least one of them was turned into a major news story with the kind of headline usually reserved for WAR DECLARED. (Yes, the Symphony\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s overall sound has improved dramatically, but that kind of improvement isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t achieved painlessly.) <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>As an example: audiences were confused by the change to our classical series, with seventeen programs of two, three of four performances each, instead of the traditional format of fourteen programs each with three performances. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve restored the earlier schedule and seen attendance improve significantly at our concerts this fall.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Carlos Kalmar had the unenviable challenge of succeeding a much-loved, long-serving music director, and has wisely concentrated on forming his own relationships with the orchestra, our audiences, our donors and the broader community. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a younger man, with a busy international career, and his work with other orchestras has brought us a new and diverse roster of conductors and guest artists like Valentina Lisitsa, who opened our season in that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153respectable \u00e2\u20ac\u201c if safe \u00e2\u20ac\u201c opening-season concert\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. I suppose there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing safer than Rachmaninoff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s second piano concerto, and Dvorak\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Symphonic Variations <\/em>and Strauss\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Also sprach Zarathustra <\/em>are certainly \u00e2\u20ac\u0153respectable\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but we sold a quarter million dollars worth of tickets to large audiences who roared their approval. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re trying to close a $2 million structural deficit, and we think the solution lies in having as many people happily paying for our performances as possible. We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t blame Carlos for the financial problems, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s working with us to design programs that will attract bigger audiences and help fix the mess. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>And yes, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve stopped recording. All those recordings with DePreist were made possible by a one-time, single gift of $1 million, which has now been fully spent. The much-revered \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nerve Endings\u00e2\u20ac\u009d concerts with Murray Sidlin were only possible because we had a grant from the Knight Foundation to produce them. Recordings, broadcasts, tours and innovative programs should be part of our overall operations and not special projects, funded by one-time grants. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a statement of principle, not a reality. At present, given our grave financial situation, we are focused on core activities and unable to take on unsustainable additional expenditures.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>One of the writers who leaped to our defence suggests that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for us to realize our community just won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sustain what is needed to operate the Oregon Symphony as it is. Perhaps that is true, but we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not giving up yet. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been working with the organization for about a year, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve concluded that the Oregon Symphony has been through so many changes in the past decade that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a wonder we have as strong a base of support as we still do. Some change was inevitable, and not all change is damaging, of course. A few of the most important changes have achieved a glorious new level of performance. One or two of them have helped to improve attendance and contributions. Most of the other, less successful innovations were the result of inexperience, caution, undue optimism, carelessness, hesitation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c small sins, really, but for an organization as fragile as a symphony orchestra, sometimes hugely damaging.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>We need a lively conversation about the role of a symphony orchestra in the 21st<\/sup> century, in a city with as vibrant and varied a cultural life as Portland. We need the support of everyone who believes in what we do, and we need to be challenged and goaded, stimulated and prodded into the pursuit of excellence at every level \u00e2\u20ac\u201c artistic, financial and institutional. But we need those who despair of our attempts and think they know what is wrong to support their arguments with facts and a realistic assessment of what is possible, in this place and at this time.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

<\/font>Elaine Calder
\nPresident
\nOregon Symphony Association
\n921 SW Washington Street, Suite 200
\nPortland, OR 97205<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This was forwarded to me by OSO president Elaine Calder – a truncated version will be published at Crosscut.com.] Response to: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can Anybody fix the Oregon Symphony?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Stephen Marc Beaudoin Crosscut Seattle Friday, November 2nd, 2007 Of course it will take more than an endorsement from Thomas Lauderdale to fix the Oregon Symphony. But Thomas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[148,115,2],"tags":[67,86,117,55,3666,53,3662,62,3660],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appreciations","category-music","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-classical","tag-conductor","tag-critic","tag-orchestra","tag-oregon","tag-piano","tag-portland","tag-symphony","tag-viola"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-8k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":513,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/03\/how-not-to-fix-the-oregon-symphony\/","url_meta":{"origin":516,"position":0},"title":"how not to fix the Oregon Symphony","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Over the last two years, the coverage of the the Oregon Symphony in the local press has become more sporadic, and when it does happen, much more pessimistic, and maybe a little bit cynical. First, an outline of what constitutes the press in Portland, Oregon, for those of you who\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":511,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/02\/more-ink-on-the-oso\/","url_meta":{"origin":516,"position":1},"title":"more ink on the OSO","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Stephen Marc Beaudoin just wrote a piece for Crosscut which is entitled \"Can Anyone Fix the Oregon Symphony?\".\u00c2\u00a0 Squarely in his sights is the newly-formed collaboration with Pink Martini front man Thomas Lauderdale.\u00c2\u00a0 Clearly, Beaudoin does not know of Lauderdale's training as a classical pianist, for he seems to find\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":514,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/03\/more-reactions-to-crosscut-oso-article\/","url_meta":{"origin":516,"position":2},"title":"more reactions to crosscut OSO article","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"You can read them here. A couple more things that occurred to me as I was reading the comments: during the last seasons of the DePreist music directorship, the programming became more and more conservative - it was wall-to-wall Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet the subscription numbers continued to fall.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":979,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/05\/19\/crosscut-article-full-interview\/","url_meta":{"origin":516,"position":3},"title":"crosscut article: full interview","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"As you may know, I was recently profiled as part of a Crosscut article about Portland arts advocates. It was ably written by Portland music writer and musician Stephen Marc Beaudoin. It was an honor to be included, and I was happy with the article as it was published. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "bloggers"","block_context":{"text":"bloggers","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/bloggers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":518,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/06\/oregonian-critic-on-oso-woes\/","url_meta":{"origin":516,"position":4},"title":"oregonian critic on OSO woes","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Oregonian classical music critic David Stabler just wrote an entry on his blog which talks about the recent Crosscut article and his take on the state of the orchestra. He comes out swinging on the merits of the piece: Stephen Beaudoin is right about one thing in his doomy Crosscut\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":869,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/21\/10-tix-to-classical-elegance-oso\/","url_meta":{"origin":516,"position":5},"title":"$10 tix to classical elegance @ OSO","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"a Special Ticket offer from Oregon Symphony: Below please find a special $10 ticket offer for Classical Elegance with the Oregon Symphony. Please feel free to circulate this offer to family, friends and other contacts who may be interested. 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