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Two weeks ago, I wrote a column on the Florida Orchestra's need for leadership and vision from the community if it is ever going to flourish in the Tampa Bay area, and that, I figured, was pretty much that until any new developments arose. But I hadn't counted on hearing from so many readers about the column, easily the biggest response to anything I have written in more than a dozen years with the Times.
People care a lot about the orchestra, and virtually all the mail I received on the subject was thoughtful and interesting. Here is what some of my correspondents had to say.
"Thanks for applying the prod to the Florida Orchestra board of trustees on getting the lead out of its collective fundament," said Judith B. Buhrman, who went on to relate a not uncommon experience among Florida Orchestra subscribers who have an opportunity to hear other symphony orchestras around the country.
"It's my belief that this orchestra, with an infusion of money and passion from the community, could rise to the first rank of American symphonic organizations. In early 2003, visiting Sacramento for a conference, I got tickets to hear two San Francisco Symphony concerts. (One featured Lang Lang doing Rocky Three and the Shostokovich 15th, and the second the Bruckner Seventh. Glorious, sublime musicmaking - I'd live there if I could survive and have season tickets.) A few days after returning, I heard our gang do the Bruckner Fourth, and it was not at all a jarring comedown. The strings a little weaker, perhaps (better instruments needed?), but otherwise a stirring and musicianly performance."
Buhrman, a Seminole resident, lamented the loss of concertmaster Amy Schwartz Moretti and first-chair flute Demarre McGill to, respectively, the Oregon and San Diego symphony orchestras next season, and she worried that other principal players could also jump ship. Music director Stefan Sanderling could get fed up with the situation.
"Sanderling, a thoroughly modern musician with a taproot sunk deep in the rich soil nourished by the great Germanic conductors, among them Klemperer and Furtwangler and his own father, is a huge talent whom we will lose if the board and management don't get cracking. We could lose the whole thing - go the way of the Florida Philharmonic. That things are tough all over is no excuse."
Sanderling's future came up in an e-mail from Drew McManus, author of Adaptistration, a Web log, or "blog," on orchestra management (www.artsjournal.com/adaptistration) McManus pondered the implication of Florida's music director's being one of the three conductors - the others are Michael Stern and David Lockington - chosen as finalists for the same post with the Kansas City Symphony.
"It will be interesting to see what happens with the Sanderling, KC and Florida triangle," McManus said. "If he wins KC and they insist he has to move there, I wonder what the response in Florida will be."
If Sanderling is named music director in Kansas City, I expect he would keep his Florida job, too, and he could have residences in both places. In some ways it wouldn't be a bad combination for all concerned, and he certainly wouldn't be the first conductor to divide his loyalty between two cities. I don't think the Florida Orchestra ever thought he would not eventually have a second U.S. orchestra.
Board chairman James B. Strenski wrote a letter to the editor saying he didn't know if the orchestra would run a deficit in the fiscal year that ends on Wednesday. "However, if we do run a deficit, I suspect it will not be because our old supporters have abandoned us and/or no new donors have stepped up. Rather, our deficit, if it materializes, will have more to do with a shortfall in the size of the average gift."
The orchestra has thousands of individual donors, probably the largest single pool of committed arts supporters in the bay area. Many of them are frustrated that the musicians' payroll was slashed this season and yet the orchestra is still talking about a deficit.
Nancy R. Iacullo, an orchestra concertgoer for more than 30 years, wrote of her dismay over the pay cut. "The players in the orchestra must be well paid for their talent. They cannot live with empty promises and words of praise. It will take dollars, lots of them, to maintain our extraordinary orchestra."
In Iacullo's opinion, the board needs to start thinking bigger when it comes to fundraising. "This is an affluent area. Just check the prices of waterfront homes and condominiums and all the people moving down here that are able to pay the big price tags without flinching."
Of course, it will take more than money to solve the problems. Jeff Woodruff, the orchestra's former general manager, thought my column could have been "even a little more direct and hard-hitting about the lack of vision and leadership at TFO going back to the '80s."
Woodruff, now executive director of the Harrisburg Symphony in Pennsylvania, posed a tough question: "Is Tampa Bay a terminal backwater in terms of substantive cultural offerings? Maybe that's the ultimate reality there."
In a second e-mail, Woodruff expanded on his point of view. "The interesting question is why won't the area support a substantive cultural scene? (I guess by asking that question I'm assuming that it won't.) Is the area just too young and immature? (Cities with sophisticated culture tend to be a lot older.) Is it too dispersed and spread out geographically (complicated by the ever-present Tampa Bay)? Is it the lack of major league corporations/foundations/philanthropic families? Or are there other cultural/economic/social forces at work that are present in all contemporary American cities to varying degrees that we don't fully understand?"
Mary Nic Dodd, the Times' former music critic, was one of several people to write in favor of an idea I floated to make St. Petersburg's Mahaffey Theater the home hall of the orchestra, though it would continue to play as well at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in Tampa and Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater. Calling it "a dream of mine for some time," Dodd said that the St. Petersburg audience "has always been faithful and dependable, and I believe that it is the most classically oriented of the three cities' audiences."
Dodd sees potential synergy in having the orchestra's home base, the University of South Florida campus and a proposed new Dali Museum all in the same area. "Mahaffey is not large enough for huge Broadway shows, but it is ideal for TFO. And with the adjoining campus and the new Dali Museum, it could be the center of a wonderful arts complex."
That's a vision for the orchestra that makes some sense. It may or may not be the right one, but it's high time people started thinking in such bold, comprehensive terms.
I heard from several orchestra musicians in response to the column, and I'll give one of them the last word. Principal cellist Jim Connors, who lives in Tampa, wrote that leadership from the community was the key:
"My sincere hope is that the right people will step forward to provide the leadership we need, and that your article won't become our epitaph."
- John Fleming can be reached at 727 893-8716 or fleming@sptimes.com