“You May Ask Yourself – How Did We Get Here?”

I meant to write a blog about the need for like-minded progressive people associated with the classical music industry to get together online and start a forum dedicated to revolutionizing our business, but then reality set in.  I also got into a great conversation with a colleague of mine at a party recently.  So, once again, this blog is about Detroit.  The $64K question – “where’s the plan, man?”

My colleague was disturbed by a one of the posts on the Detroit Symphony Musician’s website.  The post from 23 August is  titled “Hey…What About Our Strategic Plan?” – and frankly that’s a bloody good question.  I have (unfortunately) been through my fair share of Strategic Plan meetings in my career, and my reluctant conclusion is that it’s a miracle that orchestras exist at all, what with all the competing interests represented that collectively manage to have significantly less connection to reality than Glenn Beck on one of his patented rants.  But this got me interested in the DSO Strat Plan, and since they helpfully provide a link to it I decided to poke around.

I’m sorry I did.  The roots of the current problem can be found here, both with how the Strat Plan came together and how it fell apart.  The introduction to the plan flows along in an utterly predictable pattern – praise the orchestra for their unique sound; nod to the audience by saying how much we will delight them with our programming; and throw a bone to music education.

The Mission Statement is indistinguishable from that of any other orchestra, as is the Vision Statement or the Strategic Goals.  Matter of fact, it’s in the Strat Goals where the opportunity is really lost.

Strat Goal #1 leads off with:

To have an internationally recognized orchestra with a signature sound

And I would bet that every Strat Goal in every orchestra with a budget over $2 million starts off this way.  The problem with that, though, can be summed up by the old saw – “all politics is local.”  With very, very rare exceptions that international reputation isn’t going to amount to a hill of beans if you don’t look after your hometown constituency first.  They are the ones who come to your concerts.  They are the ones who will supply most of your income.  And if you’re in trouble they are the ones you will have to turn to.   Yet there seems little focus on the immediate community, something which continues in Strat Goal #2.

But it’s in Strat Goal #3 where things really collapse.  This is where Music Education comes to the fore, and I can hear the conversation at the Strat meetings echoing through the ether.  It would be hard to find anyone in our business who doesn’t believe strongly in music education, something that is obviously the case at the DSO, but when it comes to implementation the familiar refrains come leaping out:  we’d love to do more education but we don’t want to take any time, money, energy, or anything else away from whatever else we do to do it.

Now, I’m not a historian specializing in the Detroit area, but I’d be willing to bet good money that in most public schools there music education has gone the way of the Dodo.  I would bet that if the music education programs weren’t in bad shape by the late ’70s then they certainly got a stake put through their heart during the famous “ketchup is a vegetable” era (Reagan’s “progressive” educational policies, for those of you too young or to näive to remember).  There are now two full generations at least of Detroit area residents who did not have easy access to music education, and those people are your audience and donors of the future.  You can release all the recordings you want, tour whatever foreign capital strikes your fancy, and trumpet your “international reputation” to the skies, but the most effective method of being relevant in your own community is through education.

To be fair the collapse of music education programs in the schools is not the fault of the DSO.  Nor is white flight, a cratering population, urban blight, etc.   Neither is the DSO alone in this quandry – these programs have been gutted across this nation.  Instead we are faced with something of an industry wide state of denial as to how the lack of general music education directly and indirectly impacts orchestras.  What should be the most important element of a Strat Plan, if an orchestra wants to survive long term, is in almost every case I know given short shrift.  You cannot have a renewing audience, fiscal responsibility, and a great reputation without dedicating yourself first and foremost to the people around you.  Essentially, who cares what Boris in Zürich things of your recent Mahler V?  He’s not the one going to be buying the ticket to next week’s show.

But leave the Strat Plan for a minute  and get back to the original question.  Despite the glaring flaws, this Strat Plan has all the hallmarks of many rounds of give and take involving musicians, board, and management.  If you commit to a Strat Plan then shouldn’t that be the guiding document of your organization?  And, does one party have the unilateral right to completely abandon said Strat Plan?  This sounds depressingly similar to the George Bush “I can withdraw from any treaty I want to” approach to diplomacy.  Essentially, those who practice this approach – your word is mud.  The musicians of the DSO have every bloody right to wonder why and under what circumstances this plan was abandoned.  This is certainly not negotiating in good faith.  Actually, it’s not negotiating at all.

ps.  Read the introduction to the Strat Plan with particular focus on the current DSO situation.  This is exceptionally depressing.

pps.  Does anyone know whether there are musician reps on the DSO board?  And why, pray tell, is having those reps not standard industry practice?  I guess that should be the next blog…

4 thoughts on ““You May Ask Yourself – How Did We Get Here?””

  1. Good Lord, Bill! Could we have this engraved in stone? Generally speaking, when I hear of a Strategic Plan being adopted–and mind you, there are some good ones out there–I cringe. Too often Strat plans become exercises in rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

    The fact is the the fundamental nature of classical music is and has been changing. Business-as-usual is no longer a viable model. What we need is a brand new business model for symphony orchestras.

  2. Excellent post. I find it interesting that in your comments on the DSO’s Strat Goal #1, you seem to latch onto the first half of the sentence (“internationally recognized”) as being problematic, whereas I would consider the second half (“signature sound”) to be even more at the heart of the matter. How many orchestras truly have a signature sound? How could they possibly be expected to develop one, when they all play the same repertoire, and when their music directors are only expected to be in town for a few weeks of the year? (Philly used to have a signature sound because Ormandy conducted a very high percentage of their concerts for an extremely long time.) And if the orchestra doesn’t have a signature sound, why go to one orchestra instead of another? The only reason is physical proximity, which leads back to your point about the local audience being the most important one.

  3. Tom Peters is right. Symphony orchestras have never been “sustainable.” It’s just that 50 years ago no one noticed and no one cared.

    But as soon as someone — anyone — starts talking about changing how we do things, people freak out. Part of the DSO’s current situation is that management wants to re-organize the standard eight orchestra services per week schedule and have musicians do other kinds of musical things. My understanding is that many of the musicians are not in favor of this.

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