How to Fix the Boston Symphony Orchestra Mess and Cure the Ills of the Orchestra Industry at the Same Time
by Thomas Wolf
IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED, the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is in trouble. Part of the problem is that various interested parties cannot agree about what the trouble is.
Ask the musicians, and you are told that a beloved and accomplished music director was fired and the musicians were never consulted let alone informed of this key musical decision until it was made public.
Ask the CEO and the board and you are told the problems include everything from declining audiences, financial challenges, an aged physical plant suffering from deferred maintenance, and a lack of attention to community and educational initiatives with a music director who does not share the board and CEO’s vision of how to address those challenges.
Ask a New York Times critic and you are told that the music director and the orchestra give too many subpar performances.
Each of these explanations has its passionate advocates and detractors. Take the question of finances. One camp says the orchestra has been losing money for years and is eating into its endowment. Another says that financial statements prove otherwise, that those who claim financial problems are merely cherry-picking or ignoring actual statistics and the BSO (the world’s wealthiest orchestra) is in the best financial shape it has ever been in.
As to the claim that there is an audience problem and the orchestra plays to half-empty houses, some assert that the entire entertainment industry has had depressed live audiences ever since COVID-19 and in any case, many of the performances—like recent ones that featured Beethoven—were sold out.
How fruitful is it to try to decide who is right?
Perhaps all of this confusion and disagreement mask a more basic issue. The BSO and many other orchestras (albeit not all) have been drifting toward non-relevance for the past half century. Playing to a declining audience of seniors with offerings that do not depart all that much from how concerts were presented a century ago, lacking the level of buy-in they once enjoyed from political, business, and community leadership, and mired in outdated business practices, many orchestras have struggled to identify the underlying systemic issues that ail them, let alone find a way to address them collectively—that is, in a way that the board, staff, musicians, audiences, funders, and community at large embrace.
If it is true, that it takes great energy and time to turn a huge battleship, orchestras suffer from some of the same inflexibility. As music organizations go, they are large and unwieldly. They require big halls for their performances and have many seats to fill, so they have to appeal to a relatively large number of people. Their work force is unionized at a moment of decreasing demand for the orchestra’s chief product and where there is declining earned revenue for compensation. As a result, they require ever-increasing amounts of philanthropy to augment earned income. And, like so many organizations offering live events, they battle the internet and the increasing tendency of individuals to “cocoon” at home for their entertainment. Turning such battleships will take years if not decades and it will be a painful process. But nibbling around the edges instead of addressing the core challenges will not solve the problems.
So what should be done?
1. Redefine excellence
Increasingly, symphony orchestras define excellence very narrowly. The focus is on the musical quality of the playing. This is crucial, of course. But excellence must also be measured, in part, by community penetration and buy-in. If an orchestra plays superbly, but only a select few of well-heeled, elderly, wealthy patrons want to hear it, it is not excellent. I will never forget how a board member of the Cleveland Community Foundation defined excellence many years ago when I was consulting there. He talked about a golden period for the orchestra when practically every taxi driver in the city knew and could brag that George Szell was the orchestra’s conductor. We need to look for today’s version of the community’s taxi drivers.
2. Change the role and requirements of the music director
Compared to a generation ago, many music directors of top orchestras today spend comparatively little time with their orchestras—or one might say “orchestras,” since often individuals lead more than one. This was a contentious issue with the BSO’s music director. The music director must be an excellent musician of course, and it is true that the most acclaimed jet set around the world and are not inclined to give up that flexibility. But today’s music director must be both a musical leader and a community leader who is present for both roles. That means spending a substantial amount of time in the home city and being visible in the community off stage as well as active in such prosaic activities as fund raising. This may well mean hiring younger conductors—individuals who understand and covet this expanded role.
In exchange for these extra duties, let the music director shape the selection of orchestra personnel as was the case a generation ago even if it means, on occasion, bypassing input from the musicians. The musicians guard jealously their well-defined role in choosing their peers and it is often helpful. However, a music director can be hemmed in by committee decisions. There is no excuse for a concertmaster position to sit vacant for years, for example, as was the recent case in Boston. The committee approach to recruitment has also, in my view, led to a homogenization of orchestra sound and playing. Fifty years ago, one could listen to a recording and often immediately tell which orchestra was playing. In part, that is because the music director was able to shape the orchestra personnel and sound. That is less true today.
A story I love is about Fritz Reiner when he conducted the student orchestra at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. After a rehearsal, he went up to a first-year player—Mitchell Lurie—and said “when you finish your schooling you are going to be my principal clarinetist in Pittsburgh.” And four years later, that is exactly what occurred and when Reiner moved on to the Chicago Symphony, he took Lurie with him. Reiner knew what he wanted as he shaped the sound of his orchestras.
There will always need to be some opportunity for musician input and it is often extremely valuable. For example, when it comes to hiring a music director, the musicians’ assessments should count heavily. But the balance needs to shift toward the music director in musician selection.
3. Consider the whole community as the concert hall
For an orchestra to be embraced by the community, it has to be experienced by a wide range of people—young, old, well-heeled as well as regular folk, elected and business leaders, the sick, the incarcerated, people who love classical music and those who have never been exposed to it and assume it is not for them. Some orchestra personnel believe this can be taken care of by making inexpensive or free tickets available at the main venue. But that is a dead end, since many people will not set foot in the concert hall. Instead, it means going out to meet people, taking the musical product where they are—in community locations, work places, public buildings, and institutional settings. Orchestras have a particular challenge when it comes to venues of course. Finding suitable large halls in which to play is not easy. But that presupposes that an orchestra has always to play as a full ensemble. Often the collective bargaining agreement with the musicians limits the ways in which musicians can be deployed except as a full orchestra. This must change.
It is important to understand the larger issue here. At one time, orchestras were in the classical music business—or the music business generally. But when it comes to audiences, orchestras today are no longer just in the music business, they are in the attention business, competing not only with other music organizations or other arts organizations or even all live attractions, but competing with massive internet platforms. There is no way orchestras can scale up to take on these behemoths. Rather, they should take a page from those public radio stations that have successfully managed the loss of federal funding. Those that have been successful have not doubled down on their national and international footprints but have gone hyperlocal, providing a true community service that no large media company will bother with.[1]
4. Look for multi-talented musicians
Today, the criteria for musician selection is very narrow. It presupposes that the institution must search out those whose playing is the best in any group of auditioners. Nothing else seems to matter. But given the level of musicians being turned out by conservatories today, the pool of superb players is vast. Other talents matter. What kind of experience does the musician have in chamber music, in presenting informal programs—for school children and other specialized groups? What kind of leadership skills has the individual displayed in working with boards and staff? Does the individual have any fundraising skills that he or she is willing to deploy? Do they have experience with other complex nonprofit organizations? What about social media—perhaps an individual has been successful in developing an effective personal brand or show.[2] Nothing will change if the only thing that matters is how one plays.
As part of this recommendation, the process of musician selection must change. For many years “fairness” has dictated that musicians audition behind a screen. At the time, this was a positive innovation. It eliminated certain kinds of bias and it led to many more women being hired such that today, in some orchestras, there are more women than men. But the screen fosters the kind of narrow thinking that limits the possibility of considering the range of talents and abilities a person might bring to the job. Resumés and recommendations should factor into the selection process. Imagine if the finals for some positions included performing in a community setting.
In conjunction with finding musicians with specialized talents, the orchestra staff must be given the flexibility to match the best people to particular kinds of performance opportunities. If a woodwind quintet within the orchestra has developed a very effective in-school presentation, the staff must be allowed to deploy this group to these kinds of settings. Today, in many orchestras, the decision about who gets to play specific services other than orchestra concerts is determined by seniority—quality does not enter into the decision. Imagine if the seating of the orchestra was determined in this fashion and the oldest players got to sit in the principal chairs!
5. Change the supply/demand equation
Orchestras, for the most part, give too many concert-hall performances. There are many reasons for this but the primary driver has been the 52-week contract for the musicians. In the first half of the 20th century, orchestras played many fewer performances and musicians were often poorly paid for them. During the second half of the century, major orchestras agreed to full-time salaried employment with a certain number of services per week. This greatly increased the available supply of tickets to be sold. It is what led to the expansion of marketing departments, the need for additional fund raising, and other costly institutional changes.
No one should be arguing for going back to the bad old days of poor pay for orchestra musicians. But what should change is the type of services that can count towards the weekly number of those that are guaranteed. For example, American orchestras for the most part, do not have net-earned income from audio recordings, performances for film scores (most of the work goes outside the US), nor for video games, nor for video in association with major pop attractions. There are other severe limits on studio recordings that should be countable towards the weekly service guarantee. The irony, of course, is that by making this work so expensive or blocking it entirely in some cases, orchestras cannot harvest the income from them. By changing the formula (including education and community services), orchestras could balance the work flow in such a way that there is a reduction in the number of seats to be sold in the concert hall and a better balance of supply and demand.
6. Improve governance
Governance in the case of symphony orchestras is challenging. For one thing, there are the equivalent of two chiefs who generally report to the board—the CEO and the music director—and sometimes they do not see eye-to-eye. For another, the task of overseeing policy in connection with a work force of highly trained individuals is not easy. Because the technical details of things like the collective bargaining agreement with the musicians are complex, there can be a tendency to defer to the CEO without fully understanding decisions that ultimately are the purview of the board and will have ramifications that go well beyond the organization itself. Another issue is that most symphony organizations prioritize philanthropic capacity in choosing board members and this can skew the bias of board members toward the opinions of those who can make the largest gifts. And finally, because the board is often made up of corporate leaders whose day-to-day life is all about management, the temptation is to manage rather than govern. Each of these issues must be carefully addressed by a strong and experienced chair.
Spending considerable time on strategic planning is essential and part of the board’s purview. But because expertise is required that often goes beyond that held by board members, having the advice of outside experts beyond the CEO (who is an interested party) is essential. At one time, board meetings at Carnegie Hall dealt with board business before lunch and a presentation by an industry expert afterwards that was purely informational and not related to immediate decision-making. The outside expertise was invaluable for those whose purview was the future vision of the institution.
The question often comes up—should musicians sit on the board? The answer is an unequivocal yes with the understanding that the number should be limited (two is ideal) and they cannot be present when certain issues are discussed. In some orchestras, musicians take the position that in a collective bargaining environment, each side should stick to its own membership and musicians should not cross over to the board side. This is a mistake. Understanding the challenges of governance, contributing expertise to board discussions, and developing an appreciation for what is in many cases the extreme generosity of board members who are volunteers, are all positive arguments for musician inclusion.
7. Pursue local partnerships aggressively
Because orchestras tend to be among the largest cultural institutions in a community (and often some of the largest nonprofits generally), there is a tendency to limit partnership activities to peer institutions. It is fine to do a joint program with the local art museum, but peer institutions that are large often suffer from the same challenges as orchestras in reaching people who find them impersonal and threatening. Why not partnerships with the community music school or social service organization down the street? This is especially important for orchestras based in urban settings where much of the population is unlikely ever to attend one of their regular concerts.
Often, smaller organizations—whether musical or not—are effective in reaching deeply into the community. Offering a side-by-side performance with young musicians from a small local youth orchestra can not only be transforming for the participants but also for their parents, grandparents, and friends. Undertaking a series of chamber performances for families in a homeless shelter can be life-changing not only for the recipients but for the musicians themselves.
About a decade ago, the Mellon Foundation provided a grant to create a new partnership program in Boston whose aim was to help talented students of color become well-prepared to audition successfully for acceptance at leading music conservatories. In addition to providing funds for planning and design, the Foundation agreed to fully fund the initiative in its initial years. Local participating organizations included Project STEP (an organization serving the same targeted youth clientele but often at a younger age), the Community Music Center of Boston (a community music school), the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, and the New England Conservatory. When the BSO was asked to join the group, the organization declined. It was a missed opportunity, and sadly, was not a unique event.
8. Work with the conservatories to prepare musicians for the new world
Conservatories are a bit like the Pentagon. They tend to prepare students for the previous war rather than the one we are in. When my grandmother taught at the Curtis Institute of Music, the violin instruction focused on creating soloists even though more than 90 percent of her students became orchestra players. As conservatory instruction began to prioritize preparation for orchestral careers, there was hardly any emphasis on chamber music—though many of the students were attempting chamber music careers.
Today, the role of the musician is changing. There will always be a few who will become successful soloists or chamber players whose lives will be pretty much exclusively dedicated to playing concerts. There will also be great talents who land a major orchestra job purely on the basis of their playing. But for other musicians, organizations will demand more as the world in which they will operate changes. One can only image the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) will have on conventional symphony offerings and services. However, as orchestras address the question of community relevancy, they must seek musicians who have experience in going beyond the concert hall where AI will never replace the person-to-person interaction which is the heart of meaningful musical experiences.
It is important to realize that engaging in education and community activities is a skill that has to be learned, and conventionally trained musicians—through no fault of their own—often do it poorly. Their public speaking is often dismal since they have not been trained. Their understanding of how to design programs for different audiences—whether in a school or corporate setting, a hospital, a prison, a homeless shelter, a senior facility, or on social media—is nil. As a result, organizations that do this work well—entities like the Weill Music Institute of Carnegie Hall—find themselves doing much remedial professional development with the musicians. The results are striking.
Young musicians should be given these skills earlier. One sometimes hears complaints from conservatory faculty that it is all very well and good to talk about doing such training, but there is simply no time for this for students, given all their other commitments and requirements. These are often the older musicians who carry a great deal of prestige. Nevertheless, whoever they are, the answer to this complaint is simple—such training is as essential as learning basic repertoire. Conservatories must make the time.
Conclusion
How realistic is any of this? In the short term, much if not most of it is not very realistic. Change is hard, especially in institutions with entrenched constituencies that have little interest in finding common ground. Indeed, to the extent that change is coming in the orchestra field, it is often the smaller institutions, unprotected by huge endowments and finding the challenges more immediate, that are beginning to find solutions. But ultimately, change must come for everyone.
There is another question, more personal for me, which is how I feel about such changes. To be honest, I am someone who harkens back to the old days with memories of remarkable concerts in sold-out halls played by legendary musicians. I myself have had the good fortune to be one of six musicians in my family to have soloed with the Philadelphia Orchestra and I was a regular audience member in the Academy of Music, often several times a month, for the Orchestra’s concerts. But all of that is beside the point. I am no different from so many elderly folks who rue what once was. I am eighty years old. The future is not for me but for my children and grandchildren and those who come after. Hopefully, the symphony orchestra—that glorious invention of the 19th century—will be around in the 22nd.
[1] An excellent piece focusing on this particular issue can be found at AJ Chronicles: When Selling Out Is No Longer a Business Model | diacritical
[2] Cellist Nick Canellakis has a “conversations” series on YouTube with pianist Michael Brown as co-host that provides short, humorous (and sometimes irreverent) interviews with some of the top names in the classical music field.