Why Philadelphia Orchestra May Need to File Bankruptcy

We talked about the struggles of the Cleveland Orchestra just a couple days ago, and now the news is that the Philadelphia Orchestra (also considered one of the five best in the country) may file for bankruptcy.

Why, you ask?  Here are some explanations given:

• The recession has reduced ticket sales
• But even before that, the orchestra-growing demographic has been dying off
• Gen X and Gen Y aren’t adopting orchestra as a habit the way their ancestors (Boomers, Greatest Generation) did.

Sure, that’s all true, and it’s also true that, as the article I linked above said, the people running these places aren’t “sitting idly by.”  They’re doing a lot of things, including discounts, young family programs, and all the rest of the typical stuff.

Outreach is good, but my assessment of the outreach that most orchestras do is to try to persuade people that what the orchestra is currently doing is something they would like.  That is, it’s outreach on the orchestra’s terms, and part of the (well-intended) spirit behind it is that people Just Don’t Understand and that if only we could explain it to them, they’d like it.

There is a benevolent arrogance here that I think explains a lot.  Being audience-oriented means you assume that the audience has something to teach you about what you should be doing.  Again, it’s not a slavish parroting of the audience’s whims, but there has to be a flow of information in both directions.  If your outreach is done in the spirit of “civilizing the savages,” well, the savages are going to resent it, especially when the savages graduated from Penn State, work as an Art Director and have an apartment full of entertainment options.

I’m reminded of Greg Sandow’s upcoming book about the rebirth of classical music.  The whole premise of the book is that the genre is (and must) change, like everything else, and that there’s real promise in what’s NEXT for classical music.

And I doubt that what’s next is ever more active explanations of why things should stay just as they were in 1985.

(By the way, the Orchestra’s CEO quite rightly mentions in this article that bankruptcy isn’t necessarily the end of the line.  It’s a tool for corporate reorganization when the organization is still viable, but under extreme financial stress.   Important to remember.)