Opinion: On Virtual Orchestras
 
by Jimmy Gilmore*
 
The musical world is involved in a controversy over the use of “virtual” orchestras in live theatre productions. Virtual orchestra technology essentially involves a machine that electronically simulates the sounds of acoustic instruments. The machine’s operator is lead by a live conductor, who responds to the action on stage. Thus, it is technically possible to substitute one machine for an entire orchestra of live musicians. In the current production of Jekyll & Hyde by the North Carolina Theatre, a conductor and six live musicians accompany the machine and its operator. Normally, the show would be performed by twenty musicians.
 
This is an important economic issue for everyone involved. The NCT feels it must resort to using this new technology because of the economic hard times it is facing. The result is that musicians lose jobs and the audience is subjected to a simulated version of the music at no reduction in the ticket price.
 
No one doubts the economic hardships the NCT is facing. Ragtime, a fine production, did not sell well, and the City of Raleigh’s Broadway Series South brings in touring shows that offer stiff competition for our regional theatre. Everyone is familiar with the harsh economic landscape faced by arts groups nationwide, and indeed we have seen an increasing use of virtual technology to help cut performance budgets, especially in touring productions, like Broadway Series South.
 
So why don’t we just face the economic realities and meekly go about other business when the virtual orchestra comes to town? The answer goes beyond the immediate loss of employment for musicians, because ultimately everyone loses: the musicians, the audience, and the company itself.
The product that the North Carolina Theatre and other regional theatres are in the business of presenting is live musical theatre. It is obvious that virtual music is, by definition, antithetical to live performance. Eliminating twenty to thirty live performers from a show essentially cuts the “live” aspect of the production by half. Musicians are just the first casualty. Patrons know when something is missing. Audiences understand intuitively that a machine cannot perform the score with the same collective excitement, tone quality, and sense of style as a live orchestra.
 
Theatres using virtual orchestras violate a cardinal rule of live performance: “Never underestimate your audience.” Ultimately they will abandon you in droves if the experience in the theatre does not measure up to the price of the ticket. Audiences pay $25 to $65 for a ticket to the NCT. That is a lot of money for a production compromised by “virtual” music. Ironically, the hope that the virtual orchestra will stem a bad economic tide may only hasten the flood.
 
Our objections to synthesized music also have to do with the art form itself, that is, musical theatre. Musicals are a genre, a uniquely American art form. The music is the centerpiece of the experience. Virtual technology forces the audience to accept a substitute for the real thing. In visual terms, it is like expecting an audience to believe that viewing a poster of the “Mona Lisa” is the same as seeing the original in the Louvre. How long would we stay in business if we charged money to see a poster? And how many companies would stay in business if they cut the product in half and kept the price the same?
 
The Professional Musicians’ Association, Local 500, AFM, is committed to encouraging and preserving live music. We are one of the few organizations that actually take a stand against the misapplication of technology, of which the virtual orchestra is an example. Virtual orchestras are not the solution for economic hardship. Budgets can be fashioned with an eye towards preserving the quality of the product for all concerned. We encourage the North Carolina Theatre and other companies to maintain the integrity of musical theatre, keeping in mind the long-term benefits for the audience that supports it. We in the Professional Musicians’ Association are always ready to meet with Executive Directors and Managers to explore creative ways to preserve this vital part of American culture.
 
*The author is Principal Clarinet of the NC Symphony and President of Local 500, American Federation of Musicians.
 
(Posted 10/25/04)

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Newspapers Snub the Arts*
 
by András Szántó and Daniel S. Levy
 
*From 10/10/04 -11/10/04, CVNC was pleased to reprint “Newspapers Snub the Arts” by András Szántó and Daniel S. Levy**, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times on 10/3/04. The article remains available online at the LA Times’ website.
 
**András Szántó, director of the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, and Daniel S. Levy, a reporter for People magazine and a former NAJP fellow, co-edited “Reporting the Arts II,” a recent study of arts coverage in American dailies.***
 
***”Reporting the Arts II” is online at http://najp.org/publications/research/reporting2/index.htm [inactive 3/05]. The first (1999) study, “Reporting the Arts,”is at http://www.najp.org/publications/research/reporting/index.htm [inactive 3/05].

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Paul Montgomery Named GM of DSO, NCS Resident Conductor William Henry Curry’s Work Here & There, Composer Roger Hannay’s 10th Symphony, Fouad Fakhouri Appointed MD of the FSO, Chapel Hill Writer Doris Powers’ Latest Assignment, New Music Education Website from ASOL, & A Commentary on Disunited Arts… of Raleigh & Wake County (Posted 10/6/04)
 
The Durham Symphony Orchestra has appointed Paul Montgomery as General Manager. His background includes service as secretary of the Helena Arts Council in Helena, Montana, a supporting organization of the Helena Symphony and the Holter Museum of Art. He brings over 13 years of fund-raising and marketing experience with businesses in the private and nonprofit areas. Montgomery has a Master of Business Administration degree from Edinburgh Business School and a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Montana. The DSO’s press release reveals that Montgomery, “a former AFS exchange student to New Zealand attended last spring’s Durham Symphony Orchestra Young Artists performance by pianist and AFS exchange student from the Czech Republic, Lucie Cizkova. He heard how excellent the orchestra sounded and decided that he wanted to bring that quality of experience to a greater audience in Durham.” Readers may meet Montgomery at any of the DSO’s concerts, starting 10/22.
 
The NC Symphony has been in the news of late, but the activities of Resident Conductor William Henry Curry have received scant notice in the commercial media. Here’s the Maestro’s guest conducting schedule for part of the current season:
 
10/23: Peabody Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore
12/2-4: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
12/17-19: Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, with Diane Reeves
2/12/05: Shreveport Symphony Orchestra
4/24/05: Western New York Chamber Orchestra
 
Meanwhile, Curry is completing his latest orchestral score, “The Garden District,” a cello concerto for NCS Principal Cellist Bonnie Thron, which will receive its world premiere in a series of concerts in April being conducted by the composer. His other performances, in NC and elsewhere, encompass many new additions* to his ever-expanding repertoire. The list includes:
 
Berlioz: Le Corsaire : Overture
Borodin: Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor
Copland: Suite from Appalachian Spring
Curry: The Garden District (première)
*Dvorák: Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70
Dvorák: Violin Concerto
*Elgar: Cockaigne (In London Town)
*Haydn: Symphony No. 104 (London)
*Khachaturian: Violin Concerto
*Mozart: Symphony No. 34 & Requiem
*Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky
Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 2
*Ravel: Rhapsodie espagnole
*Respighi: Ancient Airs and Dances Suite No. 1
Saint-Saëns: Introduction and Rondo capriccioso
*Schumann: Symphony No. 1, Op. 38 (Spring)
Sibelius: Symphony No. 7
Strauss: Don Juan
*Sullivan: The Mikado
Tchaikovsky: Music from Eugene Onegin
Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending
Wagner: Music from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Weinberger: Polka and Fugue from Schwanda the Bagpiper
 
Composer Roger Hannay has completed his 10th Symphony, thus breaking through the psychological barrier many creators have felt since Beethoven. The Chapel Hill-based master’s latest manuscript is currently being computerized by Scott Tilley, former Artistic Director of Triangle Opera. In two movements, it is scored for “classical” orchestra – “like Noah’s Ark,” Hannay writes, it has “two of everything and a couple more” and consists of “525 measures on 140 busy manuscript pages.” Hannay’s music has been performed in NC by the NCS, by the orchestras of Greensboro, Winston-Salem, UNC Chapel Hill, and the NCSA, and by the Piedmont Wind Symphony. More information on the composer is available at http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/htm/04829.html [inactive 12/07].
 
The new Music Director of the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra, said to be the oldest community orchestra in NC, is Fouad Fakhouri. The Beirut-born maestro, who is also a composer, earned his bachelor’s degree from West Texas State University and did graduate work at Penn State. His music has been performed in Pennsylvania, Europe, and the Middle East. For the FSO’s schedule, click here.
 
Doris Powers, one of our region’s best music writers, has resigned from The Chapel Hill Weekly , which featured her columns monthly for the past four years. Her last column, dealing with plans for facilities for music at UNC, appeared in late September and may be available at http://www.chapelhillnews.com/our_town/story/1667915p-7903069c.html [inactive 9/06] for a while longer. As Powers notes at the end of this column, she is leaving the paper to embark on “a two-year project editing manuscripts of some dozen violin and keyboard sonatas for a volume in the series, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Collected Works .” Her voice – and her advocacy – will be missed.
 
A new website “to help culturally aware non-attenders become more familiar with the orchestra repertoire” has been launched by the American Symphony Orchestra League. Works will be rotated through the site – at http://www.meetthemusic.org/ [inactive 9/07] – every other week. The featured work as of this writing is Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and the commentary is by the site’s curator, Greg Sandow.
 
News items compiled from various sources & annotated by John W. Lambert (10/6/04)

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Opinion : Raleigh Arts Groups Come under Friendly(?) Fire but Dodge the Bullets – Again
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On the afternoon of September 21, well past the mid-point of Raleigh’s City Council meeting, it died a merciful death without many witnesses from the arts community. “It” was a sugarcoated, lightly veiled pill in the form of a proposal from the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County (UA) to “merge” its arts grants processes with those of the City of Raleigh Arts Commission (CORAC), which administers a far larger fund. The vote to take no action on the matter came after it had been voted down in the Budget and Economic Development Committee meeting on 9/14, but the outcome at the meeting of the full City Council was not necessarily preordained.
 
One may read “merge” as one wishes. For old timers, it reflects UA’s obsession to take over the City’s grants process – and the City’s funds. It was not the first time UA has sought to do this; given the present leadership of UA, it may not be the last. Yet old timers must wonder… why UA continues to plague the arts community it purports to serve by engineering periodic schemes to take over CORAC’s outstanding program. Some might surmise that the reason lies in UA’s chronic inability to do what it ought to have been doing since it absorbed the old Capital Area Arts Foundation (CAAF) as the financial core of what had been the Wake County Arts Council, and before that the Creative Exchange…
 
Why “merge”? Two separate pots of arts money are better than one, and fortunate arts groups – those that obtain grants from both UA and CORAC – can use one grant to match the other…. The City, with two arts employees and 16 commissioners, now manages nearly a million dollars of Raleigh’s tax money every year for conventional arts grants. In contrast, UA, with a staff of seven (as of this writing…) and 23 directors, can barely scrape together a third of that from the entire county’s corporate and private sectors (while Charlotte raises nearly 18 times UA’s goal – and does so in just six weeks, instead of dragging out the campaign for an entire year). It makes absolutely no sense to “merge.”
 
This time around, UA persuaded Capitol Broadcasting executives to meet with Mayor Charles Meeker to help make the pitch. It was said in a meeting UA hosted for arts organizations funded by UA and CORAC that Jim Goodmon was “tired of writing so many checks.” But Goodmon writes no checks to the City’s Arts Commission….
 
The proposal was defeated thanks to strong opposition from local arts groups, but the ploy may have unintended consequences, including some reconsideration of the funding support roles of the agencies Goodmon controls – Capitol Broadcasting and the A.J. Fletcher Foundation. If this happens, UA’s manipulations could conceivably put Goodmon’s funding of UA and other arts groups at risk. On the heels of Progress Energy’s substantial gifts going directly to a large locally-based arts group – gifts that bypass UA – and in light of decisions by some potential UA grant recipients not to bother to apply, since the relatively small amount of money they might get is, they say, not worth the needlessly complex and detailed paperwork, one must wonder if there is a future for UA, as it is presently configured.
 
In recent years, UA has declined operating support applications from “new” groups – including, let the record show, CVNC – and has failed to keep the organizations it continues to fund current with inflation. When the old CAAF was established – by CORAC, incidentally – its first director predicted it would be a million-dollar fund within its first year or so. Under UA’s control, it has never raised that much money from the private sector and the corporate world in any given year.
 
A year ago, faced with its fourth shortfall in as many years, UA told Philanthropy Journal that it was going to “spend the fiscal year … reshaping its overall strategy” and “talking to corporate executives about its role and future.” The fiscal year to which they referred was 2003-4, and this was 16 months ago. If the results of UA’s year of “reshaping” produced only the aforementioned revival of the “merger” scheme, it’s clear that the agency has missed the boat, not only in fund-raising but also administratively. Yet on 9/21, while the City Council was in session, UA advertised for yet another staff person. One must wonder.
 
Rumors are swirling through the arts community, particularly among Raleigh groups – which, one must recall, are also in Wake County. Some are potentially harmful to UA; one superficially outrageous proposal involves UA defunding all Raleigh-based arts organizations except festivals. CVNC asked UA President and CEO Eleanor Jordan about this and learned that the idea is indeed on the table, but she said that if it is implemented, it will not be prior to the pending grant cycle.
 
Since solutions are being discussed, here are some prioritized to-do items for the various power brokers’ consideration:
 
* Cooperation is essential…, but UA should forever renounce the idea of “merger” with CORAC and delete all references to it in its long-range plans.
* When that is done, UA and concerned citizens should persuade the Wake County Board of Commissioners to adopt a per capita funding mechanism similar to the one in Raleigh that has made the capital one of the leading bastions of support for the arts in our state.
* UA should redouble fundraising efforts within the corporate community, with leadership to come from that community.
* UA should redouble fundraising efforts within the private sector, with leadership to come from community arts and education proponents.
* The Wake County Board of Commissioners should give UA a finite period of time to achieve success.
* If there is no significant improvement in a reasonable amount of time, the Wake County Board of Commissioners should consider reassigning management of arts-in-education initiatives to the Wake County Public Schools and cutting out the “middlemen” to allow UA to focus on what Jordan says is and will remain its primary mission – raising money for the arts.
* Then if there is no significant improvement in a reasonable amount of time, the Wake County Board of Commissioners should consider defunding UA and investing in two new initiatives – hiring a development officer for the arts in Wake and establishing a new arts foundation to replace the old, woefully mismanaged fund formerly known as the CAAF.
 
Residents of Raleigh have a stake in all this, of course, because they pay county taxes. They also vote.
 
Whatever happens, the arts deserve more and better service and support than UA provides. Former UA executives Robert Bush, Margot Knight, and Marilyn Harrison aided or abetted the “merger” concept. The incumbent CEO of UA served as head of the Raleigh Little Theatre during these machinations, so she ought to have known better, but she permitted it to surface yet again. For now, what we have in Raleigh is dis-united arts. Until there is a truly viable plan for dealing with the challenges we face, collectively, many arts groups will continue to languish. A major change in our approach to funding the arts in our community is urgently needed. If it can get its act together, UA can play a role…. Now’s the time.
 
by John W. Lambert (10/6/04)
 
Note : The author has been a participant in and consumer of the arts in Raleigh for over 50 years and has written about music, primarily, for more than half that time. His volunteer work includes four years as a member of CORAC and service on several UA grants panels. This think-piece does not necessarily reflect the views of CVNC.

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NEWS from Robert’s Reviews: TIP Theater Name Change
 
by Robert W. McDowell
 
The Raleigh, NC City Council recently voted unanimously to rechristen the old National Guard Armory in Pullen Park, which Theatre in the Park has called home since the early 1970s, as “The Ira David Wood III Pullen Park Theatre” in honor of TIP’s founder and current executive and artistic director. Last year, The City Council declared December 7-14 as “Ira David Wood III Week,” in honor of the actor/director/playwright’s annual madcap musical version of A Christmas Carol, which will celebrate its 30th birthday this December, with new sets and backdrops.
Note: Robert’s Reviews will publish additional news items when time and space permits.