Truth and Consequences…

Hawai’i.  Some of us consider it a paradise.  My wife and I were married on a beach on the beautiful island of Maui and we’ve been back twice since to celebrate anniversaries.  But for others – namely the Honolulu Symphony musicians – Hawai’i is proving to be a black hole, and like the black holes of astronomy it is revealing some fundamental points about the structure of the musical universe.  Unfortunately, reality is a harsh mistress.

I know this may not come as a shocking news flash to all of you out there but the whole situation with the Honolulu Symphony is a complete mess.  I don’t have a lot of inside information on this but from the comfortable distance of the Twin Cities it seems to me like there is plenty of blame to go around.  But the assumptions of the recent re-organization plan put forth by the current Board begs for comment.

First of all the Honolulu Symphony should have never been in this situation.  The fact that the Board, the Administration, and the Musicians did not see the writing on the wall about the fiscal health of this organization over a decade ago is borderline criminal.  It smacks of the recent debacle in Columbus and should serve as a lesson to every other orchestra in this hemisphere about what happens when the Collective decides that “every man for himself” is the proper way to do business.  My first piece of advice to all and sundry would be: “stop blaming each other.” Those who live on the beach shouldn’t be kicking sand in other people’s faces.

But what is most disturbing is what has been reported about the re-org plan.  There are four things reported in the most recent article from the Honolulu Advertiser that “must change” in order for the orchestra to make it back:

• A business model based on “an unrealistic and unsustainable” budget driven by a desire to compete with other national orchestras

From a distance this looks like a whitewash.  The first part of the statement is undeniably true. Anyone who has paid attention to the health of orchestras over the past decade must have heard something about the ongoing fiscal struggles in Honolulu.  But ignoring endemic fiscal issues seems to be par for the course in this business.  Blaming the issue on competing with other national orchestras is rot.  Sure, every couple of years or so there is the whining from every “top 10” orchestra musician negotiating committee about how if their salaries don’t increase by 38% over the course of this next year they will lose their competitive place compared to the other “top 10” orchestras.  This is bunk.  There are simply too many other factors of overriding importance that are relevant to each individual orchestra: Cost of living; # of tours/recordings; health of endowment; etc.  Smart people ignore these ravings.   To assert that the Honolulu Symphony, several thousand miles from the nearest professional orchestra, is in a competition with these other orchestras is biz-speak for “how to blame our problem on other institutions.”

• Wages disproportionate to the number of hours and weeks worked.

Really?  Are we trotting out this old bugaboo again?  The problem is that musicians (or artists in general) make the near impossible look too easy.  There was that hilarious episode a few months ago when some English footballers sat in with a ballet troupe for a couple of days.  These tremendous athletes were slammed by how hard ballet was, how physical the day was, how much concentration was necessary, etc.  It looks a heluva lot easier than it is.

Years ago, when living in L.A., I was a temp at Paramount Studios for 2 months.  I regularly freaked out my boss because he would put a pile of work on my desk at 9 am, and sometime around 11 am he would come back to find me studying Brahms, or reading the NYTimes.  He would say “it takes my regular secretary all day to do that pile.”  Yeah, but there’s no way your regular secretary has had the 20 years of intensive concentration training called PRACTICING that I’ve had.  There’s not a ghost of a chance that your secretary could last through 2 straight rehearsals of Petrouchka without blowing a mental gasket.  It’s HARD! And it’s exhausting.  (Plus, I’d like to add, I bet your regular secretary doesn’t type 92 wpm; there are advantages to being a pianist).  I’d bet my bottom dollar that the “wages disproportionate” argument was put forth by someone who has never, ever found themselves in a professional artistic position and has absolutely no clue about the mental and physical rigors involved.

• An oversupply of seats and performances

I wouldn’t be surprised.  If their regular hall seats more than c. 1700 it’s probably too big.  There are very few orchestras in this hemisphere who can sustain a 2600 seat hall and I’m betting Honolulu isn’t one of them.  An oversupply of performances, though?  Without a closer look at the numbers I’m going to have to punt on this one.  It sounds like filler anyway.

• “Expectations that the Society is an employment agency or welfare department responsible for the entire financial well-being of its part-time employees.”

It is telling that this is the only bulleted point related in the article that was bracketed by quotation marks, as if even the reporter couldn’t believe the level of idiocy being spewed.  This statement shows such a colossal non-understanding of the mechanics of the classical music industry that it is hard to even pretend to have respect for the people who put it forth.  Let us ignore for the moment the not-veiled insult of referring to a collection of professional musicians as “part-time employees,” or the even more egregious slap of calling a professional orchestra a “welfare department.”  That last one is just jaw-dropping in its lack of respect, and all you musicians better get your measly butts back to the servants entrance with your grubbing, begging hand-outs from now on.

But if these people understood the first thing about how an orchestra functions on a day-to-day basis this scurrilous statement would have never seen the light of day.  Musicians audition for their positions, remember?  I’d guess that a clear majority of the Honolulu Symphony musicians are not from Hawai’i, and therefore moved there to take up what they thought was a job.  Do we have to get into the whole “years of training” argument again?  Really?  And, for the record, I don’t know a single musician who doesn’t teach, gig, or otherwise do something else to supplement their income.  The Board’s statement is condescending and shows a bias that was seen through by the bankruptcy judge with very little effort.

But wait, there’s more.

• The analysis includes recommended budget parameters that would reduce the symphony’s overall budget from $7 million to $3 million in the first year of recovery; cut the number of concerts from 24 to 14 and the overall number of performances from 43 to 20 (24 after the recovery period); and limit the number of services (outside performances) from 272 to 50 (70 following recovery). Meanwhile, the symphony’s administrative staff would increase from five to eight in the first year and 12 after recovery.

What leapt out at me was the reduction of services from 272 to 50.  What this says is that there is no possible way this organization will pay enough for it to make any sense for any musician to be associated with the future Honolulu Symphony.  Certainly no one will move to Honolulu for this gig, and I suspect that the few good musicians left will try everything in there power to move away from Honolulu ASAP.  Sorry folks, no one will be able to make a living on what your planning on offering.  Funny enough, this paragraph also holds the only intelligent idea reported – an increase in administrative staff.  Most orchestras of this size are desperately understaffed on the admin side, though with the admin track record of the last decade in Honolulu this is, perhaps, not such a good idea after all.

All in all, this “re-org report” looks like a colossal disaster.  I will be curious to find out what the competing plans set forth.  I wish I could say I have great hope for them but history leads me to be more pessimistic.  The only way for the Honolulu Symphony to survive in any form that is not a glorified 3rd string Pops orchestra is A) an enlightened group of civic and business leaders come together to propose and fund a long term, viable organization – and if the current people on the Board are what is considered the “cream of the crop” of Honolulu cognoscenti then the odds of this are slim to none; and/or B) the local Musician’s Union somehow shakes off the 1950’s mentality approach to Musician/Board/Admin/Patron relations so current in today’s world and proposes a bold and inventive framework for a new and viable business model  – I am not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, there are now musicians out of work and a community with no orchestra.  Aloha.