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Orchestra keeps playing on
  
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Tough financial times have hit the local music scene, but Philharmonic isn’t about to stop.
By Jason Wells
BURBANK — The mood was light Sunday as an eight-member chamber group of the Burbank Philharmonic Orchestra gave a “one-off” Christmas performance at Woodbury University, despite rough financial times for Burbank’s and neighboring cities’ orchestras.
Tucked into the Fletcher Jones Auditorium, musicians and the orchestra’s director, Steve Kerstein, engaged the audience with stories and historical anecdotes in between Mozart and Johann Strauss. And listeners nodded and swayed to a set list Kerstein selected to only mildly emulate a traditional Christmas tone.
But not all is quite so serene for local medium-sized orchestras, which have fallen on hard times as the market turmoil decimates portfolios or forces donors to cutback, or both.
Even before opening the show, which also featured the Burroughs High School choir for a set of Christmas carols, Kerstein set a cautionary tone.
“We’re doing OK, and I’d say OK is good,” he said.
The lowering of the bar came on the heels of the Orchestras of Pasadena last month laying off its two top executives and cutting back on concert plans in the face of declining revenue.
In announcing the layoffs, the organization warned an emergency fundraising drive would have to raise at least $3.5 million to preserve the production of 14 planned concerts through next year.
And the Glendale Symphony Orchestra has yet to recover from years of being underfunded. The last time the symphony performed at the Alex Theatre on its own accord was 2006.
Since then, a new management team has come onboard in an effort to rejuvenate the struggling organization, but with the economy continuing to falter, the challenge to rebuild has only grown as established nonprofits compete fiercely for a dwindling pot of philanthropic money.
The Burbank Philharmonic Orchestra has yet to stumble as hard as its counterparts, but even Sunday’s concert represented a renewed effort to hedge against the hard economic times, organizers said.
The orchestra typically keeps to an annual schedule of four major concerts per season. Three of the four are free to the public, with the Pops Concert at the Starlight Bowl charging $10 to assist with production costs.
Like most orchestras, it is entirely dependent on donations — a growing liability with production costs rising to more than $20,000 for each concert, orchestra President James Brandon said.
Each proceeding season is dependent on the amount of funds raised from the previous year, so planning can be “a bit hit-and-miss,” he said, even if the community has come through for the past 18 years.
“People are very, very generous. It’s fantastic,” he said.
Still, with an eye to how the symphonies next door are faring, Brandon said the board decided to put its “toe in the proverbial water” with a small, one-off concert Sunday, charging $22 for the performance, $35 to include entrance to a champagne reception.
They did not expect to make money the first time out, he said.
The idea was to gauge response and see if it could be a viable fundraising model for the future.
“As a nonprofit, you have to be aggressive,” Brandon said. “You don’t know until you start doing it.”
For Ute Dong, a donor to the orchestra, the $22 ticket price was a relative bargain, even if most of the roughly 100 concert-goers there Sunday were already avid supporters.
“This is one place you can go to outside of downtown Los Angeles and hear the same quality of music and not pay a fortune,” she said.
She and others at the venue Sunday said the city should do more to assist the orchestra and keep it from going the way of Glendale’s symphony, arguing that beyond the cultural benefits of music, having a city orchestra brought with it a certain cachet.
Besides, Kerstein told the audience while opening the show, a philharmonic is a “hallmark of a city, not a town.”
Tucked into the Fletcher Jones Auditorium, musicians and the orchestra’s director, Steve Kerstein, engaged the audience with stories and historical anecdotes in between Mozart and Johann Strauss. And listeners nodded and swayed to a set list Kerstein selected to only mildly emulate a traditional Christmas tone.
But not all is quite so serene for local medium-sized orchestras, which have fallen on hard times as the market turmoil decimates portfolios or forces donors to cutback, or both.
Even before opening the show, which also featured the Burroughs High School choir for a set of Christmas carols, Kerstein set a cautionary tone.
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The lowering of the bar came on the heels of the Orchestras of Pasadena last month laying off its two top executives and cutting back on concert plans in the face of declining revenue.
In announcing the layoffs, the organization warned an emergency fundraising drive would have to raise at least $3.5 million to preserve the production of 14 planned concerts through next year.
And the Glendale Symphony Orchestra has yet to recover from years of being underfunded. The last time the symphony performed at the Alex Theatre on its own accord was 2006.
Since then, a new management team has come onboard in an effort to rejuvenate the struggling organization, but with the economy continuing to falter, the challenge to rebuild has only grown as established nonprofits compete fiercely for a dwindling pot of philanthropic money.
The Burbank Philharmonic Orchestra has yet to stumble as hard as its counterparts, but even Sunday’s concert represented a renewed effort to hedge against the hard economic times, organizers said.
The orchestra typically keeps to an annual schedule of four major concerts per season. Three of the four are free to the public, with the Pops Concert at the Starlight Bowl charging $10 to assist with production costs.
Like most orchestras, it is entirely dependent on donations — a growing liability with production costs rising to more than $20,000 for each concert, orchestra President James Brandon said.
Each proceeding season is dependent on the amount of funds raised from the previous year, so planning can be “a bit hit-and-miss,” he said, even if the community has come through for the past 18 years.
“People are very, very generous. It’s fantastic,” he said.
Still, with an eye to how the symphonies next door are faring, Brandon said the board decided to put its “toe in the proverbial water” with a small, one-off concert Sunday, charging $22 for the performance, $35 to include entrance to a champagne reception.
They did not expect to make money the first time out, he said.
The idea was to gauge response and see if it could be a viable fundraising model for the future.
“As a nonprofit, you have to be aggressive,” Brandon said. “You don’t know until you start doing it.”
For Ute Dong, a donor to the orchestra, the $22 ticket price was a relative bargain, even if most of the roughly 100 concert-goers there Sunday were already avid supporters.
“This is one place you can go to outside of downtown Los Angeles and hear the same quality of music and not pay a fortune,” she said.
She and others at the venue Sunday said the city should do more to assist the orchestra and keep it from going the way of Glendale’s symphony, arguing that beyond the cultural benefits of music, having a city orchestra brought with it a certain cachet.
Besides, Kerstein told the audience while opening the show, a philharmonic is a “hallmark of a city, not a town.”
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