Atlanta's Orphan Orchestra

...Iowa is a state with a number of medium-sized cities, but so far there has been no concrete plan for Des Moines and other cities and towns to cooperate in attempting to build up a symphony orchestra of major proportions...

...The orchestra continues to expand its regular concert season...

...orchestras...

...the great old Fox Theater with its huge theater organ, minarets, and dome...

...and the rich and ornate Roxy Theater, a movie house that since has been torn down...

...Whalum believes that the Atlanta Symphony might attract more black people to concerts if its concert hall were more "centrally located...

...Its programs have included performances with country music artists and other "pop" concerts in the summer...

...then, he contends, the symphony would probably perform each concert in Atlanta twice and do more concerts outside the city...

...Symphony Hall seats only about 1,800...

...The 4,600-seat Civic Center was one...

...many major orchestras only perform twice...

...been as spectacular as the growth in the symphony budget or season...

...Nevertheless, the symphony did hold a workshop several years ago for contemporary composers on the Atlanta university campuses...

...However, great roadblocks stand in the way...

...Atlanta's Orphan Orchestra PETER HAGER PRUGH The experience of the Atlanta Symphony over the past decade might be instructive for the dozens of other American cities and regions that are developing big-time and almost big-time symphony orchestras...

...Atlantans "somehow hate landmarks," comments Wendell Whalum, chairman of the music department of Morehouse College in the Atlanta University complex...

...Yet the growth of the audience has not Peter Hager Prugh is a former newspaperman and a free lance writer who now lives in Atlanta...

...Ratka believes that general interest in the symphony and other art and cultural matters might be increased if the news media gave greater coverage to them...

...The symphony has a heavy schedule of concerts for school children...

...While the location is convenient for the affluent north-side Atlanta neighborhoods of Buckhead, Morningside, and Ansley Park, it is inconvenient for many others— including most of Atlanta's black community and populous, suburban DeKalb County east of Atlanta...

...Although most musicians find Atlanta a pleasant place to live, many of the better and more ambitious ones move on...

...Classical music does face some barriers...

...Even so, if just that small percentage were active supporters of the symphony, the orchestra would have at least 45,000 subscribers (three per cent of metropolitan Atlanta's 1.5 million population...

...One factor that must be considered when the orchestra travels is that it may tromp on the toes and the pride of other communities that are trying to develop their own orchestras...

...The record companies go to Europe, where costs are less, to make many recordings rather than going to the U.S...

...When the orchestra moved into its "Symphony Hall" in the Memorial Arts Center in 1968-1969, Charles Jagels, an Atlanta department store executive and then head of the Atlanta Arts Alliance (an umbrella for a number of cultural groups), warned that cultural activities at the new center would not attract much of the general populace...

...Next year's season will total twenty regular concerts, compared to eighteen this season and sixteen in 1972-1973...

...Ironically, some interesting opportunities—all more centrally located—were dismissed or overlooked in choosing an auditorium site...

...The smallness of Symphony Hall is of course an advantage to the audience...

...Atlanta, like most other U.S...

...He would prefer an auditorium of 2,600 to 2,800 seats...

...He estimated that only about three or four per cent of Atlanta's population was interested...

...Atlanta also is a big church town, and many churches put on impressive concerts...

...What the symphony is up against was vividly illustrated by the orchestra's January appearance at the inauguration ceremonies for Maynard H. Jackson, Atlanta's new mayor...

...While he believes such concerts should be held occasionally, he emphasizes: "We're kidding ourselves if we feel over the long run they can get a ground swell of subscribers . . . Basically, we're here to do classical music...

...Handsome performing halls have also been built at Drake University and Simpson College...

...In its rating last year of the nation's best orchestras, Time magazine completely ignored the Atlanta Symphony...

...The orchestra is a member of the Atlanta Arts Alliance, which is in charge of most major fund-raising for the symphony, a theater group, the city's art museum, and an art school...

...Since Robert Shaw became director in 1967, the symphony season has greatly expanded...

...orchestras, such as New York and Philadelphia...

...Others included the Municipal Auditorium on the Georgia State campus, once a hall for symphony concerts and in need of renovation...

...John Frankhouser, general manager of WGKA, an Atlanta fine arts radio station, says the station has attempted to get sponsors for such broadcasts but without much success...

...Instead, the symphony has 4,500 subscribers this season (about three-tenths of one per cent of the area's population...

...For this reason, cooperation with other cities of any size in the Southeast on symphony matters is a "difficult and touchy subject," says Michael Palmer, the symphony's associate conductor...

...Georgia is a state with a strong rural, populist tradition, and nothing seems more alien to this tradition than a symphony orchestra...

...The union's long term goal is a contract for fifty-two weeks...

...They include money and stiff union regulations...

...The orchestra currently has one black violinist, but no blacks in the winds or brass sections—areas in which black musicians have long excelled in jazz and popular music...

...However, Atlantans have no cause to be smug about their orchestra...

...symphonies do not make records, and the Atlanta Symphony is no exception...

...In addition, regular subscription concerts have featured works of modern composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives, Richard Strauss, Benjamin Britten, and Ralph Vaughan Williams...

...Atlanta is a big college and university town, and a number of schools—particularly colleges in the predominantly black Atlanta University complex, Emory University, and Georgia State University—have ambitious musical programs of their own...

...It has visited a number of smaller cities and towns in the state and region...

...Symphony Hall and the Memorial Arts Center sit at the edge of Ansley Park, an attractive neighborhood of older homes which is sometimes called Atlanta's "Georgetown...

...The Music Club and the "Met" have an economic advantage, too...

...Nevertheless, Frank Ratka, general manager for the orchestra, who was not in Atlanta when the hall was planned and built, believes the 1,800-seat auditorium does not make much economic sense...

...The symphony probably could have done more to attract local composers and music people by featuring their works and emphasizing more modern compositions than it has...

...Take Des Moines and central Iowa, for instance...

...Many neighborhood residents claim they are pleased with the location of Symphony Hall, yet its presence is spawning commercial developments, a large parking lot, and street parking that may destroy the residential character of the neighborhood...

...Symphony manager Ratka remains skeptical that the symphony can gready increase its regular audience by featuring country music or pop stars in special concerts...

...The Atlanta Symphony has been innovative in its efforts to attract a larger audience...

...We have a large segment of people that care nothing for symphonic music," says C. L. Sneed, secretary and business representative of the Atlanta Federation of Musicians, Local 148-462, a combination of the former black and white musicians locals, which represents the symphony musicians...

...For all its difficulties, Atlanta is better off with its symphony than are many other areas...

...As for union regulations, the American Federation of Musicians takes a skeptical view of broadcast proposals unless musicians are paid broadcast rates for their work...

...Minimum weekly salary in the current contract is $243 for a season that lasts a little more than forty weeks...

...Atlanta is an annual spring stop-off point of the Metropolitan Opera Company, and it is the week-long visit of the "Met" which is generally considered the social and musical event of the year for the city...

...The location of Symphony Hall on Atlanta's famous North Peachtree Street may keep some people from attending concerts as often as they might otherwise...

...Touted as the "city's best," the symphony and a chorus from Atlanta colleges and universities presented the rousing choral movement from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony...

...In addition, the Atlanta Music Club—which sponsors a number of concerts here—brings in a lot of "name" attractions each year that probably draw audiences away from the symphony...

...And pianist Leon Fleisher, who recently performed with the orchestra, says it is more satisfying for a soloist to play in concert three times rather than rehearsing and performing once or twice...

...Newspapers reported that many in the audience did not listen to the symphony music and talked through most of the performance...

...classical music business is the domain of a few major U.S...

...the Loew's Grand Theater, site of the world premiere of Gone with the Wind...

...Consequently the symphony cannot independently go to Atlanta business establishments to ask them to sponsor broadcasts...

...The Atlanta Symphony and local musicians union point out that recording rates—set at a national scale—are so high that record companies cannot afford to take chances with lesser known U.S...

...Subscription sales for the current season are down ten per cent from last year...

...It has played at all-black Spelman College and at suburban Emory University...

...Within the past few years, Iowa State University in Ames and the University of Iowa at Iowa City—both within easy driving distance of Des Moines—have built multi-million dollar performing arts centers...

...Each of the eighteen subscription concerts is performed three times...

...While this sounds impressive, in the past an increase in the number of subscription concerts has reduced the number of concert subscribers, who balk at higher prices or at what they consider too many performances...

...Robert Shaw told the audience of more than 4,000 in the Civic Center auditorium who had come to see the city's first black mayor take his oath of office that the music and lyrics symbolized the ideals of brotherhood...

...Within the past ten years, the Atlanta Symphony has changed from a community type of orchestra whose musicians included some with full-time, non-musical jobs to a "major" professional orchestra with an annual budget of about $2 million, more than six times its budget in the early 1960s...

...Despite the fame of conductor Robert Shaw and a number of outstanding concert performances over the past few years, the orchestra has not made any commercial or promotional recordings, and its concerts are not broadcast...

...He did not mention that difficult negotiations had been involved to get the musicians union to allow the symphony to appear at the ceremonies, which were telecast locally...

...One obvious way to promote interest in the symphony is through recordings and broadcasts...

...Recent figures compiled by the American Symphony Orchestra League reveal that there are currently about thirty "major" symphony orchestras in the United States with annual budgets of more than $1 million and more than eighty "metropolitan" orchestras with budgets above $100,000...

...Big name orchestras like the Leningrad Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, and the New York Philharmonic have visited Ames to play at the new Iowa State concert hall...

...Folk, rock, country, western, and soul music get most of the publicity, but there has been a virtual explosion in the number and the size of symphony orchestras performing across the land...

...This growth is more spectacular when it is realized that, in 1965, a "major" orchestra was classified as any group with a budget of more than $250,000, and a "metropolitan" orchestra was in the $100,000 to $250,000 category...

...Nevertheless, a professional symphony musician could not make his living in Des Moines or central Iowa despite all the millions of dollars spent on bricks and mortar and the famous visiting orchestras...

...a special world premiere performance of black rag-time pianist and composer Scott Jop-lin's opera, Treemonisha...

...Recording and broadcasting provisions will come up during negotiations on a new union contract to replace the three-year contract that expires at the end of the current season...

...The result has been that the domestic U.S...

...Even though some businesses have an impressive history of supporting the arts, there still remains a built-in suspicion of musical and "arty" activities...

...Their performances are in the 4,600-seat, centrally located Civic Center...

...cities, prides itself on its business and commercial spirit...

...In the past two years, the Des Moines Symphony—always a modestly financed organization with a budget under $100,000—has seen its subscription membership tumble from 2,000 to about 800...

...The symphony features a number of guest artists, but the size of the hall and the fact that the performer has to be paid for three appearances rather than one or two makes it economically unfeasible to invite audience-drawing "superstars...

...fine concert versions of Beethoven's Fidelio and Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, and presentations of almost all of the great choral works in classical literature...

...a concert version of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, featuring Cab Calloway...

...Labor talks have started for a new contract for symphony players, and some predict difficult negotiations...

...Back in 1965 there were only twenty-five "major" orchestras listed and thirty-three in the "metropolitan" classification...

...He criticizes the orchestra for not being more aggressive in searching for black musicians...

...He argues that such broadcasts would increase interest in the symphony and not decrease the size of the live concert audience...

...Most U.S...

...Playing each concert three times before the public is excellent training for the orchestra...

...While there is a substantial number of people in the Atlanta area who enjoy classical music, the symphony is not the only answer...

...in the 1972-1973 season, the symphony had to cancel one of its concerts for lack of funds...

...hinterlands to assist domestic orchestras in building names and reputations for themselves...

...free concerts in the Civic Center...

...Concerts are rarely sold out, and many subscription ticket-holders fail to attend concerts...

...While a special auditorium was built for the symphony six years ago in Atlanta's pretentious Memorial Arts Center, some people complain about the inconvenient location and about the small size of the hall...