How Goes the CSO?

Music Hall, Cincinnati Will it eat the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra?

 
   It's the question few orchestras today want to answer.
   How’s your attendance?
   The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra makes figures available once a year and the results for 2006-07 were disappointing.

• In a meeting on “New Year’s Eve,” the last day of the CSO’s fiscal year (Aug. 31), representatives of the orchestra reported that average attendance at the 53 CSO Music Hall concerts was 1,540 last season, down 10.2 percent from the year before.  
• CSO subscriptions dipped 13.7 percent.  Single tickets were down 16 percent.

   A new marketing director, Sherri Prentiss, joined the staff in October.
   Last season may have been a normal fluctuation, since CSO attendance figures were up in 2005-06, but to try to gain a wider perspective I contacted 17 of the CSO’s peer ensembles.

   (The Cincinnati Pops fared better in 06-07, with attendance averaging 2,386 for its 22 Music Hall concerts, 8 percent over 05-06, while subscriptions and single tickets inched up .2 percent.  Conversely, Pops figures declined in 05-06.)

   Seven orchestras responded, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Nashville, Rochester ( New York), San Francisco and St. Louis.   Four declined to answer, citing lack of time ( Philadelphia and New York), contract negotiations in progress ( Minnesota) and an incoming music director (Dallas). 

   Six did not reply, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, nor did the American Symphony Orchestra League, the orchestra trade association, even to general, industry-wide questions.

    ASOL president Henry Fogel did state that ‘this (attendance) is a highly complex issue about which there is insufficient data available for anyone to draw any real conclusions.  Any conversation would be in the nature of speculation and I prefer not to speculate on subjects of this importance.”
   Figures obtained from my ultimately modest sample of orchestras suggest little cause for alarm.  Detroit, Houston, Nashville, Rochester and St. Louis reported average attendance at 06-07 classical concerts of 1,391 (84 concerts), 1,572 (54), 1,300 (42), 1,421 (56) and 1,506 (65), respectively.   Cleveland reported 183,371 paid attendance for 120 classical concerts (averaging 1,528 per concert).  San Francisco reported subscription levels as “steady to rising” each year with “programming the primary driver.”
   For pops concerts, it was 1,525 for Detroit (40 concerts), 1,880 for Houston (27), 1,450 for Nashville (24) and 2,195 for Rochester (40).  Cleveland, St. Louis and San Francisco do not present pops concerts.
   It is generally recognized that attendance at symphony concerts nationwide is either flat or declining.  The elephant in the room is too much product, but with union contracts in place for up to 52 weeks a year, it is difficult to reconcile supply and demand.  Exacerbating the situation are changing lifestyles and competing options for people’s increasingly scarce leisure time.
   The CSO has not provided house counts for years, a justifiable practice, since 3,516-seat Music Hall (which has splendid acoustics) is not only the largest concert hall in the U.S. but one of the largest in the world.   The perception -- stigma even -- that the CSO is failing when the hall is 2/3 full is undeserved.  Of the 17 orchestras contacted, Rochester has the next largest venue, 3,084-seat Eastman Theater, which is currently being downsized to about 2,250.
   There are many variables affecting symphony orchestra attendance.  In addition to numbers of concerts, they include:

   [] performance hall (condition, location, acoustics)
   [] population served by the orchestra
   [] ticket prices
   [] leadership on the podium
   [] effective community outreach

   Music Hall is the “hot subject” for the CSO right now, said music director Paavo Järvi.  At a recent pre-concert “Classical Conversation” at Music Hall, Järvi commented on plans to reconfigure the hall. (Music Hall was bought by the City of Cincinnati in 1941 after the Music Hall Association, now the Cincinnati Arts Association, went bankrupt.)
   “Our hall is very large and almost never full, but rumors of me wanting to blow it up and build another one are not true.  I have always loved the majesty of the hall.  I compare Cleveland and Chicago when I guest conduct and always think ‘how wonderful this new, old hall is.’  They have new backstage facilities, restrooms, food service.  They are technologically up to date.”
   They are also smaller.  Severance Hall in Cleveland seats 2,100, Orchestra Hall in Chicago, 2,500.  Seating is cramped at Music Hall.  Järvi recalled his father’s visit to the hall last spring.  “He could not get up afterward.  We have 1,000 empty seats, but no leg room.”
   Plans to renovate Music Hall are progressing, he said. “There have been some interesting developments.  We are at a stage where a lot of options are being studied.”
   Parking is already being addressed.  With the demolition of Washington Park School (now underway), there will be space for temporary parking across the street until a new parking garage can be built between Music Hall and Memorial Hall.
   With a population of 2.1 million, Cincinnati is the country’s 25^th largest metropolitan area (U.S. Census Bureau, 2006).  Of the 17 orchestras approached, only two are in smaller metropolitan areas, Nashville (1.5 million) and Rochester (1 million).
   Ticket prices, which range from $12-$79.25 for CSO classical concerts, are another “inflated” issue.  Prices at the seven responding orchestras were in line with or more than the CSO.  The lowest price was in St. Louis ($15.50), with top tickets going for $55 in Rochester, $71 in Detroit, $83 in Cleveland, $105 in St. Louis and $125 in San Francisco.
   No American orchestra meets its expenses through ticket sales, but the CSO’s percent of revenue from earned income -- “in the high 60s,” said finance director Don Auberger -- is the highest of the nation’s major orchestras.  Most orchestras “are happy at 45 percent,” said development director Kenneth Goode.
   Contributing heavily to that is Riverbend, owned and operated by the CSO.  “We are one of the few orchestras that have a Riverbend-like facility,” said Goode.  “And we’re adding a new pavilion to Riverbend as of next year” (National City Bank Pavilion, which will seat 4,000).
   An orchestra’s music director remains key to its success.  Seven of the 17 orchestras approached have new or incoming music directors, a factor which invariably causes a spike in attendance.  CSO music director since 2001, Järvi, 44, extended his contract through the 2010-11 season last spring, with an “evergreen” clause for automatic renewals.  The Estonian born conductor delivers for the CSO.  Music Hall has been completely sold out twice during his tenure and his concerts are always the season’s top sellers.
   Järvi led his first CSO community concert in October, a fund-raiser at Lakota Freshman School in West Chester for the Lakota band program.  Similar initiatives are in the works, said CSO officials.
   Community support is what sustains the CSO, Goode said.  “This orchestra is 113 years old and has a base of support that many orchestras can only begin to dream about.  It’s part of the fabric of this community.  We had an endowment before most orchestras were even created.”
   In its quiet phase now is a capital campaign to help rebuild that endowment, which lost about one-third of its value during the stock market tumble in 2001-02 before recovering to $78 million today (the CSO budget for 07-08 is approaching $33 million).  “They have made a very significant start and we will at some point make it public.” Goode said.  “The timing is part of a plan we’ve developed to give us the greatest chance of success.”  The CSO draws 6 percent a year from its endowment.
   Although final figures are not in because of late season shows at Riverbend, the CSO expects to break even for the 2007 fiscal year, said Auberger.  The orchestra carries a slight deficit ($100,000) left over from the building of Riverbend, which goes down every year, he said.
   In the end, every orchestra must “find its own way,” Goode said.  “We have to come up with solutions that work for Cincinnati.”
   Said Cincinnati native Susan Plageman, vice president of external affairs for the Nashville Symphony, the industry’s “Cinderella” with a new 1,844-seat hall, incoming music director (Giancarlo Guerrero, 38), recording contract (Naxos), four Grammy nominations, $104.4 million endowment, newly ratified five-year contract with its musicians and subscription sales up 250 percent last season -- all after emerging from bankruptcy in 1995:
   “The Cincinnati Symphony has been around a long, long time and has some real distinctions.”

How Music Hall Seating Compares

Atlanta Symphony Hall, 1,762
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall ( Baltimore Symphony), 2,443
Symphony Hall ( Boston Symphony), 2,625
Orchestra Hall ( Chicago Symphony), 2,500
Music Hall, Cincinnati (CSO), 3,516
Severance Hall ( Cleveland Orchestra), 2,100
Myerson Symphony Center ( Dallas Symphony), 2,062
Orchestra Hall ( Detroit Symphony), 2,014
Jones Hall ( Houston Symphony), 2,912
Walt Disney Hall ( Los Angeles Philharmonic), 2,265
Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis ( Minnesota Orchestra), 2,500
Laura Turner Concert Hall ( Nashville Symphony), 1,900
Avery Fisher Hall ( New York Philharmonic), 2,738
Verizon Hall ( Philadelphia Orchestra), 2,500
Heinz Hall ( Pittsburgh Symphony), 2,662
Eastman Theater ( Rochester Philharmonic), 3,094
Powell Hall ( St. Louis Symphony), 2,689
Davies Hall ( San Francisco), 2,743
Carnegie Hall, New York, 2,804
Musikverein, Vienna, 1,744
Suntory Hall, Tokyo, 2,006
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, 2,000
Berlin Philharmonie, 2,440

By Mary Ellyn Hutton
First published in The Cincinnati Post Nov. 23, 2007