Royalty
talking with my father about the state of orchestra funding, i wax pessimistic. there's just no money for symphonies these days. audiences are aging quickly, a lack of music education is strangling future subscribers, and the musicians... well they study their whole lives and have immense talent so they deserve big paychecks. plus you gotta have special halls with good acoustics. it all just adds up to a fairly grim prognosis.
my father expresses disbelief. he thinks there will be support for live symphonic music long into the future.
that's when i realized that symphonies have never made money. and i said to dad,
"what the symphony needs is a King."
it's always been some rich dude, or some rich family, or some rich consortium that has funded symphonic music. a king, duke, pope, the medicis, the church, and lately the Fed and State.
well guess what? the Fed ain't coughing it up. Arnie is chewing our tail like a week old cigar butt. our big pocket donors are getting stretched thin trying to pick up the slack.
symphonies around the country are going belly up.
so dad says, "yadda yadda new ideas, brave programming, alternatives..." but hey. i work at the san francisco symphony and we're doing all that. that's why we aren't belly up. just, you know, getting snarly around the food dish.
i wonder how many of you would miss the symphony if it was gone? if there was no opera season next year, would i notice? what about in ten years? how would that affect san francisco? or america?
i guess my fear is not so much that symphonies, or the classical arts in general will disappear, but that nothing will take their place. thought provoking entertainment is rare and the audience for it is slim.
oh! gotta run. the finale of Friends is on.
(this blog post public service announcement brought to you by the letter L and the number 8)
I have never been to the San Francisco symphony. Can you get me free tickets?
Ha, ha. No seriously, I should take my kid before it's too late and it's gone.
Kooky Komment #2: What the symphony needs is a little more t&a.