Podcasts about graydon royce

Acclaimed theater critic Graydon Royce explores how we can restore arts criticism from passing snaky judgement to its own true insightful form of art, 1-31-18. Hosted by the Garaventa Center.

So, what comes next for the Minnesota Orchestra in the wake of the contract agreement that ended the bitter 15-month lockout and returns the musicians to Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis on Feb. 7? Short answer: a considerable amount of work. Settling the lockout is only the first mountain in a series of precarious peaks that the Minnesota Orchestra has to climb on its way to a healthy future, says Graydon Royce, classical music critic of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “Somehow the social fabric between the management and musicians has to be repaired and that’s a big, big question here of whether that can happen,” Royce tells Naomi Lewin. “There are still people who write letters to the editor who say, 'We'll come and see the players because I like the players but I’m not donating to the orchestra anymore,’” added Royce, who has chronicled the labor dispute since it began in October 2012. Relations between players, management, donors and audiences are such that “you have an orchestra that is still mad at itself.” At the heart of the lockout was a dispute over the size of pay cuts aimed at reversing a multi-million-dollar deficit that had peaked at $6 million in 2012. After musicians refused to accept pay cuts of up to 40 percent, and the two sides failed to agree on on new contract terms, management locked the musicians out on Oct. 1, 2012. The new contract cuts base pay by 15 percent. Minnesota announced its 2014 season on Friday, one that includes 39 classical concerts, plus educational and family programming. A series of guest conductors are to take the podium including Yan Pascal Tortelier, Mark Wigglesworth and Eric Whitacre. Osmo Vänska, who resigned as music director in October, will return to conduct an all-Sibelius program in March, followed by a single performance with soloist Joshua Bell in April. Despite the new season plans, the lockout has taken an enormous toll, said Royce. Not only did the orchestra lose millions in ticket income with more than a season cancelled, but each musician lost over a year's salary. Whether Vänska will return full-time is a long shot. “There are certainly board members who feel that Vänska was not a perfect soldier – that he should not have made a public ruckus that he would quit if there was not a deal by October 1,” said Royce. "At the same time, I think that he felt really personally hurt by that, and felt he was a put in that position where he felt he had to stand up and say something.” It could take a long time to woo back alienated audiences and donors; other orchestras that have lived through debilitating strikes have found that recovery can be frustratingly slow. Yet there is a model to be found: in the Detroit Symphony. Three years after its six-month strike, it has been on a roll, performing at Carnegie Hall last season, streaming its concerts online, and balancing its budget for the first time in six years. Last week, the musicians ratified a three-year contract. "I think Detroit is actually really instructive,” said Royce. “They got out into the communities and did a lot of concerts basically intended to repair the personal capital."

A symphony orchestra gets a gleaming new concert hall. It’s a symbol of cultural ambition, civic pride and even a centerpiece of urban renewal. Or, is it an albatross and a money pit whose costs ultimately come back to bite the organization? As we hear in this edition of Conducting Business, the recent history of orchestras in Philadelphia, Detroit and now, Nashville, has led to questions about the "build it and they will come" philosophy. Some argue that, in the push to build or renovate halls, orchestra administrators and their patrons succumbed to an irrational exuberance that proved particularly disastrous when combined with the 2008 financial crisis. This week, the Nashville Symphony narrowly averted a foreclosure on its concert hall, the $123.5 million Schermerhorn Symphony Center. Only with the help of a major donor was it able to reach a last-minute deal to pay off its lenders and keep the hall out of the banks' hands. Nashville's situation is particularly unique in that it experienced a natural disaster on top of man-made ones: in 2010, a severe flood caused some $40 million in damages. But at times, orchestras sometimes build or significantly renovate halls when they aren't sure what else to do, said Adrian Ellis, principal of the firm AEA Consulting. "You often find museum extensions and new facilities are not so much the result of deep imagination but the result of actually thinking 'well, here's something we can all get around.'" Arts organizations can also suffer from delusions of grandeur. Some orchestras have looked to the example of Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, which used award-winning architecture (by Frank Gehry) as a way to lure tourists and economic development while generating excitement around the orchestra. "But what you can do in an L.A. or a New York or a global city you can't necessarily do in a Nashville or a Minneapolis," said Ellis. The Minnesota Orchestra is currently undertaking a $50 million renovation of Orchestra Hall, the ensemble's home in Minneapolis, in an effort to improve onstage acoustics as well as public amenities like an expanded lobby. But the orchestra just lost an entire season to a lockout of the musicians, who are balking at steep pay cuts demanded by management. Photo: Design for the renovated Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis (KPMB Architects) "[Management's] argument is this is important to their strategic plan because they need a better facility to generate more money, to monetize more off-nights, to bring in more community events and concerts from outside," said Graydon Royce, the classical music critic of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. "The hall is supposed to open in August. But what are they going to open with?" The orchestra also runs a real risk "of completely alienating their audience and you're going to have this new hall and I'm not sure what the value of that will be," added Royce. Ellis sees a pattern in the U.S., "around a lot of civic ambition and very expensive concert halls combined with either static or declining audiences, and critically, patterns in philanthropy." In Nashville, the immediate crisis is past but the orchestra has told subscribers that it needs to take aggressive actions to improve its finances. "What we have seen in the last few days is a reprieve, not a solution," said Nina Cardona, a host and reporter at Nashville Public Radio, who covers arts and culture. "Yes, they keep their hall now and that is great for them. But they've still got to operate the hall. They've still got to pay for the staff that it takes to keep a place of your own running. That's the real expense. The debt payments are not what have driven them into the ground. It's operating the building." Weigh in: have orchestras over-invested in concert halls? Or do halls bring in audiences who might not otherwise attend a concert? Share your thoughts below.

Recently, WQXR.org polled listeners on what's needed to help troubled orchestras in several major American cities. Focusing on major symphonies in Atlanta, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, St. Paul and San Antonio – all of which face contract disputes and bulging deficits – the responses varied considerably. Some listeners called for for management shakeups; others advocated more innovative programming and concert formats. A few said that orchestras need to take on a greater educational role in order to fill the void left by public school cutbacks. In this segment, we review the poll results and pose some of your comments to three experts: Jesse Rosen, president and chief executive of the League of American Orchestras Drew McManus, an orchestra consultant and blogger at Adaptistration.com Graydon Royce, music critic at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune Listen to the show above and tell us what you think of the solutions offered. And please share your reactions in the comments box below.