Orchestra should not play second fiddle

The Florida Orchestra faces a particular problem in Hillsborough County, where Broadway shows often relegate it to a smaller hall and audiences are eroding.

By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 15, 2002

Tampa Bay has a good symphony orchestra. But it's time to decide if we really have what it takes to make it great.

Pondering the future of the Florida Orchestra brings up a host of complex issues -- from real estate to the survival of classical music -- but it really boils down to leadership.

The orchestra has a problem that won't go away, one that could put the orchestra out of business if community leaders don't come up with a solution.

The immediate problem is that the orchestra can't put together a consistent schedule at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Whenever a Broadway tour comes to the center for a long run, it takes over the center's Morsani Hall, relegating the orchestra to Ferguson Hall, which is too small, acoustically speaking, for symphonic music. Furthermore, with only 1,000 seats, Ferguson can't generate enough ticket revenue to support a professional orchestra.

In seasons when there are no blockbusters booked into TBPAC, the problem is somewhat manageable. This season, the orchestra has been able to work around weeklong runs of shows such as Kiss Me, Kate and South Pacific, with just a few concerts in Ferguson. But next season, when The Lion King is in Morsani in December and January, it is out in the cold.

Six of 14 masterworks programs, as well as four of the eight pops programs, will be in Ferguson next season, according to the latest word from orchestra management staffers who spend endless hours trying to fit square pegs into round holes. That's what it takes to work the orchestra's complicated season into the calendars of TBPAC, Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg and Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater. The 2002-03 schedule is to be released by the end of the month.

In Tampa, even loyal subscribers are bailing out. At concerts in Ferguson, empty seats often leave gaping holes in the audience; in many cases the tickets were sold to subscribers who didn't show up because they can't stand the small hall. Who could blame them for not resubscribing?

All this comes at a perilous time for the orchestra. Though ticket sales have held up in the wake of Sept. 11, the recession is bound to take its toll on an organization that is financially fragile even in the best of times.

With music director Jahja Ling and resident conductor Thomas Wilkins leaving at the end of the season, and the auditions of potential successors still going on, the artistic direction of the orchestra is in limbo.

The irony is that the growth potential probably is greatest in Tampa, compared with Mahaffey and Ruth Eckerd. In general, the audience in Tampa is younger and more diverse.

So how can the orchestra survive -- much less thrive -- if the erosion in its Tampa audience isn't addressed?

Even with the problems at TBPAC, attendance this season for each masterworks concert there averages 1,350, only slightly less than Mahaffey (1,380) and more than Ruth Eckerd (1,120). As the less than capacity figures suggest, Mahaffey and Ruth Eckerd are not without problems for the orchestra, either, but at least it can get into those halls most of the time.

"The challenge for this orchestra is Hillsborough County," executive director Leonard Stone says. "It's got this huge population that venuewise can't be adequately serviced by us. It's like the chicken and the egg. I've heard people say, "Show that you're fiscally viable and then we'd support the idea of a venue for you in Tampa.' The other side of the coin is that we can never be fiscally viable until we have that guaranteed venue in Tampa."

But the problem is not really being addressed. Instead, when TBPAC recently announced a $30-million capital campaign, the focus was on its education program, including the establishment of a performing arts school. The needs of the orchestra are plainly not a priority.

Now, I'm all for education, but it would be ridiculous to have a performing arts school at TBPAC and no symphony orchestra.

Judith Lisi, president of TBPAC, groans when I bring up the subject of the orchestra's displacement from Morsani. She has worked hard on this problem, but she's not about to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Ever since the initial extended run of The Phantom of the Opera almost singlehandedly pulled the center out of debt, she has presided over one of the most lucrative Broadway series in the country.

"We do everything we can for the orchestra," she says. "But I can assure you, if you put a poll out there and asked people if they want Lion King or to have the orchestra play in that space four times, what the response would be."

No doubt Lisi is right, but it's not a fair comparison. The Lion King is a once-in-a-lifetime attraction, an artistic landmark, propelled by massive marketing and hype; most shows that boot the orchestra out of Morsani are revivals or glitzy spectacles.

More important, the bay area has never experienced what a first-rate Florida Orchestra could do for it, not with all the encumbrances on its operations. No other orchestra expends so much time and energy and expense shuttling from hall to hall to hall, except perhaps the Fort Lauderdale-based "I-95 orchestra," the Florida Philharmonic, which also has problems.

Many orchestras around the country are in strong shape, performing exciting, relevant programs to full houses, and there's no reason that couldn't be happening here. Even with its problems, the Florida Orchestra delivers a remarkably high level of musicmaking. Year in and year out, it tops my list of favorite performances of all kinds in the area.

Back in the 1980s, founders of TBPAC had the orchestra in mind when they planned to build a 1,700-seat concert hall in addition to the 2,500-seat Morsani. But the plan was ditched when bids came in too high. The site remains vacant -- it's the property north of Morsani's lobby and west of the proposed education building -- but there's nary a word to be heard of a concert hall.

Not even orchestra officials are talking about trying to raise the money to build a concert hall. Instead, they want to build up an endowment. The industry standard is that an orchestra endowment should be about three times its operating budget, which would mean an endowment of $30-million here, taking into account the inevitable rising costs in years to come.

An endowment is essential to raise the pay of the orchestra's musicians, now among the lowest in the country, but a campaign to raise the money would join a crowded field. Already, major arts fundraising campaigns are under way at TBPAC, Ruth Eckerd Hall and Tampa Museum of Art, all centered on new buildings. It's apparently easier to raise money for bricks and mortar than for musicians, and the orchestra will have a tough time making its pitch without a solution to the hall problem.

"It is a Catch-22 for them right now," Lisi said. "If you're going to support the orchestra, would you want the money to go to a building, or to help in terms of their endowment?"

Unless the community develops a long-term plan for the orchestra, it won't matter.

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