The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Bickering; Enough!

As artistic director of the Festival at Sandpoint and someone who has committed his musical energies and talents to Sandpoint’s festival for the last 10 years, I am deeply disturbed by the strife that has split the community asunder, particularly during the last few weeks.

I am not so much angry as I am saddened by the disaffection of many former friends, from the festival and from each other. It seems to me - 2,500 miles away - that the level of incrimination, recrimination and outright lies has reached an intolerable level.

I suggest that you town folks get all factions to talk with each other, rather than shouting at each other across the newspaper headlines and editorials, and in separate stump meetings.

Stop your bickering, all of you, or else - in baseball lingo - “I’m outta here.”

I’ve been extremely loyal to Sandpoint, its festival, its people, for the sake of bringing great music and quality art and entertainment to North Idaho. I don’t have to do this; I have plenty of other things to do in what’s left of my life. I’m now 70 and will not waste my time with what has become a cauldron of antagonisms and shortsighted decisions.

And for God’s sake, stop beating up on Connie Berghan. Unless you can prove all the accusations flung at her in recent weeks and months, it would be best to reduce the heated rhetoric.

Perhaps Berghan and the board have made some “mistakes” in the last four or five years, and perhaps there has been a certain alienation of the board from the community. But let us not forget that the years 1993 and 1994 were extremely successful, both artistically and financially.

That was due in no small measure to Berghan’s talents in dealing with the impossibly rising costs of performers, productions, managers and agents.

I don’t like the Beach Boys and the fantastic get-up costs involved any more than some of you in Sandpoint. However, remember that many others loved them. Had we not had the Beach Boys and Natalie Cole this summer, the festival would now be in really deep financial doo-doo.

I believe the festival needs to return to its original and more modest vision, and there are ways of doing that. On the other hand, bringing big acts to Sandpoint in the last three or four years was not some evil scheme hatched out by the board. It was simply one way to deal with the festival’s rising costs and to keep the festival’s symphony concerts and Schweitzer Institute afloat.

The various attempts to move us out of Memorial Field certainly didn’t help matters; and I can’t blame Berghan and the board for feeling hurt. What are they supposed to do, turn the other cheek? Of course they have to look for another site or sites.

And to you of the business community, who now bemoan that the festival is contemplating spreading its wings a little: No one is talking about leaving Sandpoint.

Where were you six months ago, when we needed your outcry and support? Where were you when we asked for your financial support? Some of you have never given us a nickel. And where do you - some of you - come off telling us what acts we can hire and not hire, that you will only support us and sponsor our concerts if we hire those acts that you personally approve of?

And where were you when the wonderful Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra played this summer to a measly audience of 750? Or when I conducted the Spokane Symphony in fantastic classics of the great symphonic literature? Do you even appreciate what the Spokane Symphony costs us annually - and even at that, the orchestra musicians are woefully underpaid.

Do you really appreciate the costs of the Schweitzer Institute - whose wonderful offerings, be it said, most of you never attend - and the fact that most young musicians (students) nowadays have no money to pay for the costs of their training, almost all of which we have to provide in terms of scholarship?

The crux of the matter, now, is that the community of Sandpoint, if it really wants to retain the festival, must rally to the festival’s financial support, much more than in the past. Most of your significant support has come from Coeur d’Alene, Spokane and other Inland Northwest regional locations, not Sandpoint.

You can’t have it both ways: crow about the festival as your own and at the same time not adequately support it.

The irony is that the success of the festival at Sandpoint has given others in the region the idea to start popular concerts, festivals and other potential money-making schemes. (That is to say, without symphony concerts and an educational institute). This has got to be alarming to us; you would criticize us if we weren’t alarmed. Even in Spokane, new and free concerts are being offered. If you lived in Spokane and you were offered a free concert in Riverfront Park, wouldn’t you go to it, rather than drive for an hour and three-quarters to Sandpoint, paying $10 to $15 a ticket, and getting home near midnight?

Wake up, Sandpoint! It’s your festival and you better be good to it. No one is on some kind of a power trip - and certainly not a money trip. Berghan and I have many times not been paid at all for our work - or at least not until a year or so later. That’s another reality which some of you ought to think about.

Above all, I plead with you, be friends. Work out your problems. If you really want the festival, help it to stay in town. Don’t fight us when all we’re trying to do is to figure out how to stay viable, competitive and retain the highest artistic and entertainment standards for you.

And now that I’ve had my say, you can fire me, too.

MEMO: Pulitzer Prize-winning conductor Gunther Schuller’s extensive musical credits range across a spectrum that includes jazz and classical idioms. A musician and teacher, he was for 10 years musical director at Tanglewood. He served as artistic adviser and principal conductor of the Spokane Symphony Orchestra, 1984-85, and has conducted the orchestra on numerous occasions since. He was named artistic director of the Festival at Sandpoint in 1985 and has conducted Spokane Symphony performances at the festival ever since.