Organizers Will Assess ‘96 Season

The Festival at Sandpoint, which ended its 14th season Sunday, is a unique series of events. Where else in the Northwest or anyplace else for that matter can a listener hear symphonic concerts, rhythm and blues, classical chamber music, country-western, jazz and new compositions with the ink still wet on the page? No other place that I can think of.

But the Sandpoint Festival is in trouble. Ron Wasson, the festival’s executive director, might have been referring to a bad dream or some natural catastrophe as he described his feelings at the end of this year’s event. “It’s a relief to have it over,” he says.

Wasson, formerly operations manager of the Spokane Symphony, became executive director for the Sandpoint Festival in May with much of the festival’s planning still to be done. “We pulled it off and had some excellent concerts,” he says. “Unfortunately, the audiences did not materialize.”

With a budget of $793,000, this year’s deficit is estimated to exceed $50,000. The festival’s largest audience was for country singer Kathy Mattea, with 1,976 ticketholders at Memorial Field, a location that can comfortably seat at least 3,000. Only 662 tickets were sold for Brian Setzer’s rock and jazz band. The symphonic concerts fared worse; there were only 428 ticket-holders at the opening concert of the Symphonic Strings (it was cold and rainy). Even the best attended symphonic concert, with piano virtuoso Alexander Toradze playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto, drew only 1,085.

The festival’s board meets tonight to assess the summer of ‘96 and determine what to do for 1997. “There will definitely be a festival next summer,” Wasson says. “We’ve survived worse situations than this, but we’re going to have to make some cuts and do some things differently.”

What cuts? What differences? These are ominous questions for those who depend on Sandpoint for summer music.

The festival is not what it once was. Beginning as a weekend of three concerts by the Spokane Symphony, it added an educational component and soon included popular headliners to attract larger audiences. There is no turning back the clock on that mixture to return to what some Sandpoint residents long for, “a nice little music festival.”

Part of the attendance problem lies in lack of awareness. Wasson admits that the festival’s advertising budget, about $8,000, is far too small and that festival leaders have not effectively courted audiences through community service organizations outside Sandpoint such as Kiwanis or Rotary or though music departments in Northwest colleges and universities. Not all the advertising on Madison Avenue would turn Sandpoint into The Gorge with its heavy-duty rock acts or the Spokane Arena with its larger metropolitan audience potential. But The Festival at Sandpoint does have to make people aware of its unique blend of diverse music.

Wasson predicts that midweek concerts are likely to be eliminated next summer. He is guarded about another decrease in the number of symphony concerts, already down from four in 1995 to three this summer.

“We’re very proud of our symphonic programs,” Wasson says, “but they are a major expense. With symphony players currently in contract negotiations, we know that cost is bound to go up.”

Weather is a problem and always will be as long as mainstage concerts are outdoors. Yet the outdoor concerts are a part of the festival’s charm. Rain dampened attendance at both the 1995 and 1996 concerts, and temperatures both summers sometimes sank well below the level at which musicians are contractually obligated to perform. Neither symphony players nor other musicians have refused to perform yet.

Venue has been a problem for the festival that may get much worse. The festival’s lease on Memorial Field expires next summer and its renewal by the Sandpoint City Council is very much in doubt.

The shapely but oft-repaired tent under which mainstage events are played is the festival’s trademark. But it needs replacement.

Many of the classical chamber music and jazz programs as well as the Schweitzer Institute teaching programs have taken place at Schweitzer Mountain Resort. No one seems to know whether Schweitzer, with its own financial problems, will continue to host the institute or its concerts.

The Sandpoint Festival board is not going to change the weather, but it needs to look hard at ways to make the concerts accessible to more people and give better protection against the weather to musicians and audiences.

The most important thing the festival has added in its 14-year history is Gunther Schuller, who became artistic director at Sandpoint in 1985 after a 20-year career in teaching and administration at the Tanglewood Festival’s Berkshire Music Center. Schuller’s vision for Sandpoint has always been the Tanglewood model with its ideals of interaction between the musicians of the Boston Symphony, well-known international soloists, young professionals and student musicians. At Sandpoint, Schuller has added his longtime interest in jazz - “America’s classical music,” he calls it - to the Tanglewood model.

Some in Sandpoint view Schuller and the Schweitzer Institute as luxuries the festival cannot afford. Without them, The Festival at Sandpoint becomes just another small-town concert series.

Schuller is a brilliant and demanding musician, not always an easy man to work with, so I’m told, but a man of high ideas and vision. The Festival at Sandpoint is more than a series of concerts, and it’s Schuller’s ideals and vision that make it unique.

, DataTimes