Fiscal Harmony The Spokane Symphony - And Its Musicians - Go Seeking Stability

Arts organizations have to look for money everywhere nowadays. The Spokane Symphony is no exception.

The symphony has every right to call itself the flagship of Spokane’s performing arts organizations. The orchestra has a budget of $2.2 million, a contract ensemble of 75 players (plus any extras the music calls for) and an audience that sometimes fills the 2,700-seat Opera House.

In August 1996, the Spokane Symphony embarked on a Major Gift Campaign that will enter its final phase Wednesday with a Community Division kick-off reception for 200 volunteers. The campaign will shift from a focus on a few large contributions to smaller and more numerous donations.

The campaign’s goal has yet to be set in a dollar amount, but the aim is in the millions. So far, $2.5 million has been pledged to the campaign.

Jonathan Martin, the Spokane Symphony’s executive director, says the purposes of the drive are survival, stability and quality. “It will assure that the orchestra is going to be in business three, five, 10 years from now and, hopefully, that its members will be playing in a better compensated, more stable, higher quality orchestra.”

Things are not easy in the world of classical music. One unnerving benchmark is the steady decline in the market for classical recordings, now down to 4.8 percent of overall record sales and falling slowly but steadily. Also, people who regularly attend live performances attest to the “graying audience syndrome” that makes musicians and managements wonder where the audience of tomorrow will come from.

Another problem is increasing expenses. Though more than a third of the Spokane Symphony’s budget goes for players’ salaries, no one would claim orchestra members are overpaid.

The 75 contract players earn an average of $8,560. The average pay for the 30 core players (which includes principals, assistant principals and other key players) is $11,320.

Most of the orchestra players earn the majority of their livelihoods teaching music at schools or colleges, giving private music lessons, playing in jazz groups or other ensembles, or in a variety of non-musical occupations.

“Our most important goal is to change the way we compensate our players - not only moving the baseline compensation up across the board, but also being able to attract and hold on to key players in the orchestra,” Martin says.

The symphony, like arts organizations everywhere, wonders where the money will come from to provide the artistic attractions to build audiences and provide continuity and stability.

“We sat down for our long-range planning sessions to make an estimate of what our needs were,” Martin says. “Our earned income now accounts for about 51 percent of the budget.

“That earned income has some serious limitations: There are only so many seats in the Opera House, where we give most of our performances, and we have only so much latitude in ticket pricing in the Spokane market.”

Why not just give more concerts?

“Several orchestras in this country have gotten themselves in deep trouble attempting to play more concerts than their communities wanted to buy tickets for,” Martin says. “Some of them just have not survived.”

More government support?

Angry debate continues on governmental arts funding, with many questioning whether there should be any support at all and one prominent politician asking whether it’s fair that operas and symphony orchestras receive government support while Willie Nelson does not.

“Right now, government support of the Spokane Symphony is at around 3 percent and falling,” Martin says. “In this political climate, nobody sees that changing in the foreseeable future.”

Foundation support has eroded as well as many foundations have closed their doors or shifted their attention from the arts to social and health services.

An important part of the Spokane Symphony’s income, nearly 15 percent, comes from the orchestra’s endowment. Catherine Rafferty, campaign manager of the symphony’s major-gift fund drive, says the endowment fund stood at just over $4.5 million in September 1996 before the current drive began.

The campaign, plus growth in the symphony’s existing endowment (owing to a benevolent stock market), has already raised the endowment to about $6.3 million, Rafferty says.

“The old rule of thumb,” Martin says, “is that the endowment fund should be three times your operating budget. But I would say it now ought to be four or five times the operating budget.

“With the current situation of foundations closing, aging audiences retiring from their involvements with the arts and the drying up of government support, the 15 percent of our income now coming from our endowment ought to move to about 20 percent.”

The fund campaign already has resulted in the establishment of five endowed positions in the orchestra: the music director, the concertmaster, the principal second violin, the principal trumpet and the principal horn.

“There are some others,” Rafferty says, “that we are not prepared to announce until they are confirmed.”

The largest restricted gift in the campaign so far, $500,000 from the Jewett Foundation in honor of Mary Jewett Gaiser, will fund a special guest artist or guest conductor once a season in perpetuity.

“The first of these artists will close our classics series next season,” Martin says.

“Another major gift was from Metropolitan Mortgage for a program that will take the orchestra out of the Opera House into areas of the community for people who might not otherwise have an opportunity to hear a symphony orchestra,” Martin adds.

“That gift will go into the actual operations budget of the symphony rather than into the endowment fund,” Martin says. “We took great pains to call this a ‘Major Gifts Campaign’ as opposed to an ‘Endowment Campaign.’ Some people simply won’t give to an endowment fund and prefer to have their gift spent in operations as a more direct benefit to the orchestra.”

But, Martin admits, the majority of the gifts do go into the endowment.

“Several orchestras have eaten up their endowments by using endowment funds to pay off shortterm operating losses,” he says. “Some have no endowments, while several large orchestra have endowments of $75 to $100 million.

“Our endowment is very well protected, controlled by an organization separate from the Spokane Symphony Society,” Martin says. “It is the Spokane Symphony Endowment Fund Inc., with its own board and its own investment management.

“They make the decision on how much money to give to the orchestra each year.

“Once or twice a year I go to them and present the current financial situation and a projection of the future financial situation, as I see it,” he says. “They come to a decision on what to give us.”

The symphony’s Major Gift Campaign will soften the blow of decreased income from other sources and lessens the orchestra’s current heavy dependence on ticket sales.

“The ultimate result of this campaign for Spokane is we’re going to have an orchestra and an orchestra that continues to improve in quality,” Martin says.

“What the orchestra gets is improved compensation and the kind of leadership, guest artists and guest conductors that will make us proud of what we produce from the stage.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Color Photos

MEMO: These 4 sidebars appeared with the story:

1. Symphony Profile Karen Conlin cello, music teacher and Roman Catholic nun Conlin was born in Ann Arbor, Mich. “I started becoming interested in playing in an orchestra when I was in grade school. We moved to Spokane. I attended Sacred Heart grade school, where I took piano and played violin in the school orchestra. When I was in the sixth grade, they needed a cello in the orchestra. I knew that was the instrument I wanted.” Colin became Sister Karen when she was in college, joining the Order of the Holy Names. She attended Fort Wright College and later Boston University. She had played in the Spokane Philharmonic for one season while still in high school, and became a member of the Spokane Symphony for a season in 1972. After returning to Spokane from Boston in 1980, she rejoined the orchestra and has been a member since. She teaches 30 cello students at Holy Names Music Center. “I love making music and I enjoy doing it with others,” she says. “For me, it’s not really possible to separate the reasons why I play music from why I became a sister. They both evoke many of the same longings and fill many of the same satisfactions.”

2. Symphony Profile Andrew Plamondon trumpet and air traffic controller Plamondon grew up in Boise. His musical training included a bachelor’s degree in music from Boise State University and studies toward a master’s in trumpet performance at Indiana University “I contracted Bell’s palsy, which paralyzed the left side of my face. For about three years I didn’t play the trumpet at all; in fact, I wasn’t playing the trumpet when I moved to Spokane 11 years ago.” After his musical career was temporarily grounded, Plamondon was selected for the Air Traffic Control Academy. His first assignment was to Spokane. “By the time I completed my certification as an air traffic controller, the Bell’s palsy had pretty well worked itself out. So I started playing in the community band here, started meeting some of the musicians around town and began playing a lot.” Though he is not a contract player with the symphony, Plamondon is a frequently used player in works that require a large brass section and as a substitute for contract players who are ill or unavailable. He is also well known as a jazz performer. “It’s fascinating to be a part of something that has 80 or more musicians that is something much bigger than any one individual’s role. It’s a real thrill.”

3. Symphony Profile Michael Price associate concertmaster and attorney Price grew up in Hartline, Wash., and moved to Spokane when he was 6. “I started lessons in Spokane’s first Suzuki violin class at Fort Wright College. Then when I was 11, I was one of Kelly Farris’ first students when he came here from New York,” Price recalls. The two are now stand partners at the head of the symphony’s first-violin section. Price joined the Spokane Symphony in 1980. “I was playing in the orchestra, serving as the orchestra’s librarian, conducting the Spokane Junior Symphony and teaching a class of 30 violin students. There was nothing I would turn down,” Price says. “I was going nuts trying to do all of this.” When Price’s first daughter was born, he turned to law to provide additional income. He now maintains a busy law practice with up to 40 court appearances a week, and he serves on the bench as a pro tem judge in Spokane County Superior Court. “My law practice is more exciting than it’s ever been, but playing the violin is what I love to do,” Price says.

4. PERFORMANCE TONIGHT The Spokane Symphony and guest-artist Vladimir Feltsman will perform tonight at 8 p.m. at the Spokane Opera House. Feltsman will perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. Tickets are $13.50 to $28.50, available at the symphony ticket office (624-1200) and G&B Select-a-Seat outlets, or call (800) 325-SEAT.