Symphony’s Woes Linger

Community bafflement over the San Diego Symphony Orchestra continues to grow as the organization’s financial picture becomes harder and harder to understand.

In the latest twist in this increasingly unpopular soap opera, Executive Director Richard Bass revealed that despite the phenomenal fund-raising campaign earlier this month that raised more than $2 million and allowed the orchestra to eliminate its long-term debt and avert bankruptcy, it is still possible that the symphony could end its fiscal year with an operating deficit as high as $820,000. Bass said the latest financial figures replace what he now says were “extremely optimistic projections” offered during the fund-raising drive, when contributors large and small opened their purses and checkbooks in an unprecedented display of support for a San Diego arts institution.

Symphony President M.B. (Det) Merryman says Bass was citing worst-case-scenario figures that don’t reflect the true financial picture. He said this year’s deficit will probably be hundreds of thousands of dollars less than Bass indicated. That could be, but those were the figures used by Bass in trying to persuade his musicians to accept salary concessions.

Whatever the orchestra’s true financial outlook, the musicians can hardly be blamed for feeling as though they are being asked to bear an outsized share of the financial burden through substantial pay cuts. One also can’t help but wonder how long it will be before Music Director David Atherton, who for five years has been the indispensable man in the symphony’s survival effort, starts looking for a more stable setting in which to ply his trade.

We think the message in these latest figures is that no one in San Diego should feel complacent about having “saved” the symphony. Contributions must continue to flow in if the symphony is to avoid future large deficits. And the symphony is going to have to help itself by being candid with the public about its finances, by budgeting realistically, and by mounting a serious marketing campaign aimed at selling some of the seats that go begging each week at Symphony Hall.