The one benefit of the Delaware Symphony’s declaration of a
suspended season for 2012-2013 has been the excellent and prolific coverage of
their plight in the News Journal. Never
before has the DSO had so much press!
Perhaps this will get some people talking about solutions
for the 2012-2013 season. In such a
crisis situation, the best thing to start with is to count assets and
liabilities. Executive Director Lee Williamson was quite
right to declare a state of emergency, but the latest suggestions of a cure
might kill the patient, so could we please go back to some sensible solutions?
Listing the assets of the DSO would take much more space
than this blog usually devotes to a single article, but a few essentials must
be listed. The excellent musicians who
are currently in the Delaware Symphony (and many from the past who stuck it out
when the DSO was but a fledgling of its current musical achievement) have
migrated to Wilmington and the surrounding area because of the symphony. Yes, they had to take other jobs to support
themselves and to be able to play in a symphony. (Note here that even to play in a regional
symphony and even to qualify to play in the DSO when it was NOT as good as it
is now, the musicians had to be of a very high quality.)
The musicians themselves have fanned out and many have
started some ‘side jobs’ that have produced excellent public school music
programs. Just to cite a few: Martin Beech, Associate Principal Second
Violin, conducts the orchestra at the Kennett High School and Kennett Middle School in nearby Kennett
Square, Pennsylvania. .Mr. Beech started teaching 38 years ago, taking over when there were only 12 string students district-wide. Today, the district has a full-time music teacher for the elementary schools and Mr. Beech has string lessons, full orchestra class, string ensemble and string chamber groups at both the high and middle school. The orchestras grew from 45 students in each school to about 75 students today. Rosaria Macera, violin, is director of the orchestra
at Newark High School. Since Newark High
is a choice school, kids bus from all over the district because they want a
chance to play in an orchestra. Ms. Macera’s orchestra has become an exacting,
award-winning program which has attracted the attention of Maestro Simeone
Tartaglione of the Newark Symphony Orchestra.
He has invited many of Ms. Macera’s students to participate in
coordinated activities with his symphony.
These two examples of ‘side jobs’ of Delaware Symphony members shows how
deeply the DSO musicians affect our community far beyond their roles as symphony musicians.
Maestro David Amado is also a tremendous asset of the
Delaware Symphony. He is talented, has local roots, and he has taken the DSO to greater heights than they have
known in their entire 100-year history.
Credit must be given not only to Maestro Amado’s predecessors for
providing him with a very good orchestra to begin with, but also to the
musicians who patiently played and improved and stayed with an orchestra that,
quite frankly, wasn’t all that hot forty years ago. It took a great deal of faith for many people
to persevere to create the orchestra we have today. Maestro Amado is still here with us and is
under contract, so he is a current asset.
He is also devoted to the DSO and their progress and his reputation will
be strongly influenced by what happens in the coming season. Rest
assured that he will be energetically fighting for the DSO’s survival.
Maestro Amado and others have also created assets in their
connections to other institutions in Delaware.
There have been many coordinated programs between the University of
Delaware Music Department and the DSO – some fine performances with Dr. Paul
Head’s University Chorale which brought in large audiences. There was a coordinated New Year’s Eve Gala at
the Delaware Art Museum; there have been many education programs from visits to
schools, to family concerts, to hosting 90-plus girl scouts to earn their music
badges.
Last and not least are the audience members. As Harry Themal correctly pointed out in his
June 11 editorial in the News Journal, they are ‘aging and dwindling’, but they
are not dead! And I might add that the
audiences who filled the Grand for the pops and youth concerts are not really
all that aging and dwindling. Must the
DSO tell them to look for other entertainment in the 2012-2013 season? In doing so, the DSO would be telling local
area restaurants, hotels, cafes and parking facilities to expect hundreds fewer
customers on symphony nights.
For the liabilities, we should list not just the actual
money owed, but the loss of goodwill created by forcing the DSO to cancel the
scheduled artists for the 2012-2013.
Wise though the decision may have seemed at the time, the cost of cancellation in most cases is a
hefty fee which would have been better spent in asking that artist to retool
and use a piece from their repertoire that would have fit a smaller chamber
orchestra or group. This would have not only
been a better cost outcome, but it would have sent the message that artists can
count on the DSO as a potential employer, even if they could not finance the
original schedule with full orchestra.
Another liability is the loss of faith and trust of the
musicians. The potential earnings lost
by the sudden suspension vary from musician to musician, but the loss of trust
in the DSO is the same. This is a tremendous
hurdle for David Amado. He has built up the musicians’ trust over a number of
years and he and the orchestra members have developed a rapport which has
resulted in some excellent performances.
The board and executive director have done him a great disservice by
being too quick with the knife.
The absence of a development director is a liability. To say you have no season and no planned concerts and still want
donations is a nonstarter. To say you
want donations and have no one to coordinate them is another nonstarter. Cutting this off is cutting off the water and
roots of your tree. If the board does
not correct this, they might as well chop it down.
If the community wants to retain the magnificent quality of
the Delaware Symphony Orchestra and the associated effects of parallel events
created by the DSO and its members, they must stop the bleeding and start
tending this incredible oak which has been growing for the past one hundred
years. Insist that the symphony regroup,
have smaller concerts and spend a year not suspended but reduced. Give Maestro Amado enough budget to get as
many of his musicians performing as possible.
Get a development director to send those musicians EVERYWHERE. Have that person tap into grants from
everything from special education to reading promotion to musical paper dances.
Connect to untapped groups rather than sending profuse and expensive mailings to
people who just attended a concert. Send
out complimentary tickets to every major company and hotel in the county to
grab those potential audiences who are not already there. Do whatever you have to do.
But don’t stop the music.
