Stage II of the competition took place over two weeks in March with 52 young hopefuls auditioning across the country. Thank you to our two national adjudicators and to each of the orchestras and specialist adjudicators for all their efforts over this time and in the earlier stages of the competition.

The successful candidates will be moving on in the competition and performing at the Stage III finals to be held in Adelaide and Tasmania.

The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei will host the Strings category at 7:00pm on Saturday 2 June in the Elder Hall.

Shane Chen (VIC) will perform the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D

Katerina Nazarova (TAS) will perform the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor

Anna Da Silva Chen (NSW) will perform the Elgar Violin Concerto in B minor

This concert will be broadcast live on ABC Classic FM (at 7:30pm on Saturday 2 June).

The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Northey will host the Other Instruments category at 7:00pm on Saturday 23 June in the Adelaide ABC Studio 520.  

Jessica Foot (VIC) will perform the Vaughan Williams Oboe Concerto

Jonathan Ramsay (NSW) will perform the Linkola Euphonium Concerto

Shanie Klas (VIC) will perform the Rosauro Marimba Concerto

Som Howie (NSW) will perform the Copland Clarinet Concerto

This concert will be broadcast live on ABC Classic FM (at 7:30pm on Saturday 23 June).

The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei will host the Keyboards category at 7:30pm on Thursday July 5  in the Federation  Concert Hall in Hobart.

Tony Lee (NSW) will perform the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 in Bb minor

Jeremy So (NSW) will perform the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3 in C

John Fisher (QLD) will perform the Liszt Totentanz

Young Kwon Choi (NSW) will perform the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor

This concert will be broadcast  on ABC Classic FM at 7:30pm on Friday 6 July.

I came to realise very quickly that the course was more than just an accumulation of podium time. It was in fact a tightly-knitted network of tasks and activities which all pertain to the many-faceted profession of conducting: ear-training, score analysis, physiotherapy, encounters with people working in orchestral administration and the media – not to mention the actual conducting sessions, which remain the core of the program. In short, this two-week course condensed all the aspects one could expect of a comprehensive postgraduate conducting curriculum such as the one I attended at the Royal Academy – with the added benefit of putting a professional orchestra at our disposal.

Last but not least, a course such as this one gave me a golden opportunity to make fruitful encounters with talented conductors and instrumentalists from the Australian musical scene, to learn from them and, hopefully, give a little something in return. I strongly recommend it!

Maxime Tortelier

Participants and staff. Michael Dahlenburg, Anna Howell, Christopher Seaman, Eugene Ughetti, Loclan Mackenzie-Spencer, Edward Ananian-Cooper, Nathan Aspinall, Christopher Dragon, Maxime Tortelier, Luke Dollman

It was an extremely hot January day in Hobart that saw the coming together of eight of Australia’s and one of Europe’s most promising young conductors, to attend the inaugural Symphony Services International Conducting Summer School. Christopher Seaman, director of SSI’s Conductor Development program, was the teacher for the two weeks, and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra our host for the event.  TSO provided the most valuable training component for the participants, and the reason that the program is unique – significant podium time in front of a professional orchestra.

The participating conductors were Nathan Aspinall (QLD), Eugene Ughetti (VIC), Michael Dahlenburg (VIC), Loclan Mackenzie-Spencer (VIC), Edward Ananian-Cooper (SA), Christopher Dragon (WA), Anthony Pasquill (NSW), Daniel Carter (VIC) and Maxime Tortelier who travelled from the UK to attend.  Click here to read Maxime’s impressions of the program as our very first international participant.

The Summer School was held over a period of two weeks and involved intensive training for the aspiring maestri with a gruelling timetable of activities that were scheduled on top of the regular conducting sessions with the orchestra. Kim Waldock, Education Manager of the Sydney Symphony, spent countless hours with the group sharpening their aural skills, Bronwen Ackermann worked individually with each participant on posture and movement, and Mairi Nicolson provided insight into the media and publicity. Principal players in the TSO shared their knowledge and expertise on specialised instrumental techniques and what they look for in a conductor, and composer Maria Grenfell offered some insight into what it’s like to prepare a contemporary work and collaborate with a living composer. The group were advised of the wide range of responsibilities of an artistic director and chief conductor, from corporate relationships to concert programming, by TSO’s Managing Director Nicholas Heyward, and Manager of Artistic Planning, Simon Rogers.

Brahms’ Symphony No. 4, Debussy’s La Mer and the Elgar Enigma Variations were only a small part of the long list of orchestral works the conductors were asked to prepare for the Summer School. They were also taught the art of “accompanying” with soloists Jennen Ngiau-Keng and Alexey Yemstov who each graciously and beautifully played their concertos (Bruch Violin Concerto and the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 respectively) many times over so that every participant could have a go.

We welcomed two guest teachers, Ollivier-Phillipe Cuneo and Luke Dollman, both successful graduates of SSI’s Conductor Development program. Olli, who has a wealth of experience in operatic conducting, took the participants through some of the much loved repertoire from Mozart, Puccini and Verdi with singers Tiffany Speight and Michael Lampard. Luke assisted Christopher Seaman with his teaching, working individually with each conductor as soon as they stepped off the podium, allowing any technical issues to be addressed immediately.

Increasing the course time to two weeks and spacing the orchestral calls over this period allowed sufficient time for the participants to digest instructions and implement suggested changes, resulting in their really gaining a sense of their own progress.  It also enabled the young conductors to make a personal connection with the musicians in the orchestra who all agreed that there was real development across the board over the fortnight.

Thank you to all the guest lecturers, teachers and artists involved in the Summer School, as well as the musicians and staff at the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and at Symphony Services International who all contributed to its success.

Anna Howell
Artist Development Coordinator

A technique of conducting does exist and can be learnt and practised down to its smallest details before a student first attempts to conduct an orchestra. - Hermann Scherchen

Can the art of conducting be taught? The question is an old one and despite the proliferation of conducting courses around the world, the answer is not straightforward. Ask a selection of experts on the subject and you will get a wide variety of answers.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this is the relative youth of the art of conducting itself. It is easy to forget this in a musical world which has seen figures such as Karajan and Bernstein rise to near god-like status, but the idea that conducting is a profession in itself is essentially a 20th century one. It was not until the appearance of figures such as Hans Richter late in the 19th century that the concept of the specialist conductor began to take hold. Even Hans von Bülow, who is very much remembered today as one of the great pioneers of conducting, was far better known during his own lifetime as a concert pianist.

The idea of actively training conductors was initially slow to come about, it being assumed that conductors should simply learn by first-hand experience. Richard Strauss famously told one aspiring conductor asking for tuition: ‘I can teach you all that can be taught about conducting in a few minutes, the rest can only be learnt through experience.’ Gradually, however, some of the basic elements of conducting began to be taught, particularly in Germany. Whilst little material exists detailing what form these early conducting classes took, we can guess from the writings of people such as Hermann Scherchen that any conductor training that did take place in the early part of the 20th century was at a fairly rudimentary level. It was not really until after the Second World War that the formal education of conductors flourished, with some form of training becoming the norm at universities worldwide.

But what sort of skills should a conductor possess in order to lead an orchestra? Most of us in the music industry think we already know, but perhaps it is worth taking a moment to reassess. As well as issues relating to basic musicianship and the visible, physical act of conducting, a successful conductor must know how to work with a group of people. As the world renowned French conductor Charles Munch once said, ‘Think for a moment of what it would mean to a pianist if by some miracle every key of his instrument should suddenly become a living thing.’ The conductor should also have an intimate knowledge of the score being performed and understand its structure, orchestration and harmonic content. He or she should have a clearly formed interpretation and have developed enough aural skills to be able to hear what is going on in the orchestra, and be able to solve problems as they arise. The conductor should be able to convey their vision of the piece primarily with their physical being rather than speaking, and not least of all, the ideal conductor will inspire the musicians of the orchestra to play to the best of their abilities. For an idea of what one orchestra was looking for in their next chief, click here. With so many individual ingredients required, the question arises again – can conducting be taught? Clearly some of these skills are teachable, but others are perhaps beyond the reach of a conventional education. The second half of the 20th century saw a proliferation in conducting courses being taught, particularly at the tertiary level. As such, the beginning of the 21st century seems to be an appropriate time to look back over this period and assess the strengths and weaknesses of various programs and approaches that have developed throughout the world, and to assess the ‘teachability’ of the art itself.

Leading conducting programs around the world.

Whilst conducting is now taught at a vast number of institutions around the world, I have looked closely at a small group that I would consider leaders of the pack. In Europe, three institutions stand out – the St Petersburg Conservatoire in Russia, the Sibelius Academy in Finland, and the Vienna School of Music and Arts in Austria. However, the teaching methods used at these three institutions vary quite dramatically.

The St Petersburg school of conducting still revolves very much around the teachings of renowned pedagogue Ilya Musin (1904-1999) who taught many big names including Valery Gergiev, Yuri Temirkanov and Tugan Sokhiev over a 60 year period. Musin had a very disciplined approach to the art of conducting and had a detailed technical system which he expected all of his students to adhere to. Students would work with two highly experienced pianists on a regular basis and also have the opportunity to conduct a small professional orchestra that has existed solely for the purpose of training conductors in St Petersburg since the early 1980s. Many former students of Musin speak of having to make a break and develop their own style after completing their studies with him, but at the same time of having an incredible technical vocabulary to draw upon.

This contrasts quite markedly with the approach taken by Jorma Panula who was the conducting professor at the Sibelius Academy from 1973 to 1993 and was also the first course director for Symphony Australia’s conductor training program (1997-2001). Panula himself says that he ‘has no method’ and indeed he is famous for his free approach. Rather than imposing any kind of technical system as the Musin school does, Panula works with what he believes to be the student’s natural movements and helps to make them more effective. To him the individuality of the conductor is of primary importance, and he detests anybody who should try to imitate any of the greats. Students have the opportunity to work with a paid chamber orchestra of high-level students twice a week and each orchestra session is followed by a session of equal length where the rehearsal is analysed on video, and this is where most of the teaching is done. Though video is of course used elsewhere, the emphasis placed on it as a learning tool is unique to the Sibelius Academy. This method allows the student to work more or less uninterrupted whilst on the podium and hence provide an experience closer to a professional situation.

Vienna has long been a mecca for conducting students and again has its own unique approach to conductor training. The golden period for the school was undoubtedly the 50s and 60s under the professorship of Hans Swarowsky, during which time students included Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta and Mariss Jansons. Whilst Swarowsky is not remembered as being particularly demanding regarding the physical aspects of conducting, he clearly instilled in his students a deep and thorough approach to the understanding of music through its form and structure. Many teachers have followed since the Swarowsky era, but what continues to make the school unique is the sheer number of students studying conducting full-time. This academic year there are approximately 70 students in Vienna, which is a stark contrast to the Sibelius Academy (12) and St Petersburg (19). There are two professors, each with his own class and the bulk of the teaching is done in groups of five, with four students playing two pianos while the fifth conducts. A professional orchestra is hired periodically to give students a taste of the real thing, but of course with so many students time is limited. However, one of the advantages of having so many students is that courses in subjects such as ear training and orchestration can be tailored specifically for conductors, thus students in Vienna can expect a more thorough grounding in these areas than they will receive in other institutions. Naturally, Vienna is a hub of musical activity and because of this a great place for a budding young conductor to be.

Although not as established as the previous three schools the Zurich School of Music and Arts is unquestionably one of the younger schools on the rise and will no doubt soon join its older siblings as being one of the ‘go to’ places to study. On the question of whether you can teach conducting, Professor Johannes Schlaefli prefers the word training to teaching and sees himself more in a role similar to that of a sporting coach. He provides the framework for the student and directs their attention to crucial points at the right moment. But the students themselves ultimately must do the work and make their own discoveries.

In the US conductor training is led largely by schools on the east coast such as the Juilliard School, the Curtis Institute of Music and the Peabody Institute. One slightly smaller school that deserves to have its name added to this list is the School of Music of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Currently headed by Kenneth Kiesler, this program has produced a large number of successful graduates and developed an excellent reputation over the last 25 years. What makes Kiesler’s approach different to other conducting pedagogues is his willingness to push the boundaries further than most in terms of what aspects of conducting are teachable. Some of the great conductors of our time such as Giulini and Abbado have been said to physically embody the music whilst they are conducting. But is it possible to teach such a concept to a student, or is it an inborn talent? Kiesler believes it is teachable and, uniquely, has various methods to assist his students to open themselves up emotionally and physically, so as to enable the possibility of this concept of embodying the music. This leads us very much into the field of psychology as Kiesler believes the conductor needs to allow him/herself to be ‘vulnerable’ to the effects of the music. In his one-to-one lessons he sometimes improvises at the piano and encourages the student to feel the music in their person, before giving a gesture. This is of course in addition to a very rigorous, traditionally grounded conducting program. On the subject of charisma, Kiesler says, ‘As far as I am concerned charisma emerges from having authority and the only way to have authority is to have knowledge.’

Another crucial factor to consider when comparing courses, is the audition process. How does one predict what kind of people will make the best conductors? Otto Werner Mueller is one of the biggest names in the US conducting scene having been the teacher at the Juilliard School for many years and is currently the teacher at the Curtis Institute. Whereas most courses ultimately place the emphasis on the student’s demonstrated abilities whilst standing on the podium, Mueller is more interested in the student’s listening skills, harmonic knowledge, analytical skills and ability to play an orchestral score at the piano. This naturally leads to a student group with a very different profile to most and hence produces a different kind of conductor.

The Juilliard School has been going through a transitional phase in recent years and has recently appointed Alan Gilbert, the new Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, to lead their program. It will be very interesting to see how this develops in the coming years, and how the students there will benefit from close links with one of the world’s great orchestras.

There are of course many things all of these courses have in common. A solid musical background is required to survive the rigorous audition procedures at all of these schools, and students once admitted are given the chance to work with orchestras on a regular basis. This is clearly a vital ingredient as many aspects of this art can only be learnt with the instrument itself. Another linking thread is that all of these schools have a long history of training conductors at a high level, and have built their reputations over a substantial period of time. In Australia, we currently have two Conservatoriums that offer full-time conducting program, but both courses are relatively young in international terms. Hopefully the excellent work currently being done by Imre Pallo and John Hopkins in Sydney and Melbourne respectively will be foundations for courses that in the future will also be recognised internationally.

Obviously there are other avenues open to aspiring conductors other than training at a tertiary institution, although in the eyes of this author, this is the best way forward, as there are some skills and habits that are best developed through weekly training. Having said that, an intensive masterclass or summer school experience can be enormously beneficial and is actually the perfect supplement to a long term course of study. Without doubt the most famous summer schools are in the US, namely the Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festivals. In Europe the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy is particularly sought after by conducting students. Shorter masterclasses are also becoming increasingly common (particularly in Eastern Europe) and in some cases these masterclasses are linked together to form part of a larger structure. Germany’s Dirigentforum and Symphony Services International’s own program in Australia are two excellent examples of this, with the latter program providing a unique opportunity for Australians to gain ongoing instruction in front of a professional orchestra. And of course, more than one conductor has ventured on to the podium with no specific training at all, but inevitably he or she will have to learn many lessons the hard way and in a very short period of time.

So can conducting be taught? Ultimately the answer seems to be yes, but to quote the venerable Pierre Boulez, ’Teaching is only a beginning; it is teaching yourself that is important.’

Luke Dollman © 2012

Luke Dollman is active as a professional conductor and is himself a graduate of the Sibelius Academy in Finland and a former Fellow of the Aspen Music Festival. He was a participant in the Symphony Australia conductor training program in the late 1990s and today is a teacher in the program. He is writing a PhD on the subject of conductor training.

I walked around Hollywood and admired the mural on the eastern wall of Hollywood High School. It depicted alumni – Laurence Fishburne, Judy Garland, Carol Burnett…You can’t blame Hollywood for celebrating movie actors. But then, on Hollywood Boulevard, I stopped dead in my tracks. There, memorialised in the pavement, was the name of Joseph Szigeti, cited for his work in the recording industry. I’d had no idea that classical musicians were honoured with stars on the Walk of Fame. But then I saw more of them – Lotte Lehmann, Pierre Monteux, Igor Stravinsky, Lauritz Melchior.

I remembered then that classical music was once mainstream. I guess I’m talking about the 1940s, the 50s at a pinch. Bugs Bunny could put a mop on his head and everyone knew he was mocking Leopold Stokowski. The Three Stooges could murder ‘the Sextet from Lucy’, and the sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor was familiar enough for the joke to float.

What went wrong? Could you do that now? Could Jay Leno include Gustavo Dudamel in his nightly spiel and raise a laugh?

Two recent articles got me thinking about this even more. The first was a story in Hawaii Magazine about the resurrection of a symphony orchestra on Oahu. The Hawaii Symphony Orchestra has risen to replace the Honolulu Symphony which collapsed last year after operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for almost a year. They gave their debut performance on 4 March, and have announced their calendar until May. What struck me most however was the program they’re offering – Beethoven, Brahms, Brahms, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart… Fair enough, they don’t want to scare away an audience, but is Sibelius, Rachmaninov and Rodrigo as much of the 20th century as an audience can take? Arutunian, represented by his trumpet concerto, is still alive, and they’ve scheduled Tan Dun’s Internet Symphony, but the common language dates back to the middle of last century. The mid century, I suppose, after which there was a dreadful disconnect between orchestral repertoire and most of the modern world.

Then I opened up Toronto’s Globe and Mail, which was carrying an interview with Peter Eötvös. ‘Never give what the public asks’ it was headed, and the story talks about how little it matters to Eötvös whether the hard-edged contemporary music he champions has achieved widespread popularity.

These two stories portray a gulf. You’ve got sticking (mostly) with what’s safe on one hand, and a perfectly contented lack of concern about public response on the other. I wonder how far Hollywood would have come with such attitudes? ‘Who cares if you watch?’ Can you imagine a film executive echoing Milton Babbitt’s ‘Who cares if you listen?’

Yet Hollywood keeps pumping out new films all the time. Not all of them are brilliant, sure. But most Hollywood films are okay. Some are very good. A few each year ‘push the envelope’ (to use that ‘cutting edge’ term). It’s probably about the same proportion of enduring excellence that you got in mid 19th-century Italy, where Verdi, Ponchielli and Boito stood above the ruck. And all Hollywood movies play to audiences that classical music would kill for.

What does Hollywood do that’s different, I wondered. I stopped in a bookstore and browsed through a screenwriting magazine. ‘A lot of the cuts are from the first act,’ said screenwriter Dustin Lance Black in an interview about the Clint Eastwood film, J. Edgar. ‘Some of it was in the Bruno Hauptmann story….at a certain point it was clear enough and we didn’t want the audience to be ahead of it.’ What! ‘We didn’t want the audience to be ahead of it’? They’re conscious of where the audience is in relation to their storytelling? I wondered if this might offer a clue. It seems to be completely the opposite of what Eötvös seems to be saying. Is this the sensitivity that disappeared in classical music sometime in the 20th century?

I wondered if Rachmaninov and Sibelius thought this way. As I went back through Beverly Hills, Rachmaninov’s old suburb, I thought, ‘Nah, probably not. They would have been expressing themselves too, and if it happened to gain them an audience, all the better.’ But then, they and their audience shared a common language.

Gordon Kalton Williams © 2012

Summit Rundown

‘Getting To and Making the Ask’ – PowerPoint presentation by Paul Hogle

PowerPoint presentation by Frankie Airey

Constituency Notes and Agenda – CEOs

Constituency Notes and Agenda – Artistic Administrators

Constituency Notes and Agenda – Marketing

Opera New Jersy's 2010 production of Carmen. Photo: Jeff Reader

You have only to walk a few blocks in many places in the US to get a sense of the scale of philanthropy here. Just pick a city. In Charleston, for example, within a five-minute walk, you can pass the Karpeles Manuscript Museum, Charles P. Darby Children’s Research Center, and Stiles and Virginia Harper Student Services Center…In Savannah, you can stand inside the Richard and Judy Eckburg Atrium, the impressive entranceway to the Jepson Center, one of the Telfair Museums of Art. Philanthropy is pervasive. Sponsorship also is part of life. Is everything sponsored? The ‘please turn off your cellphone’ message before the curtain at San Diego Opera is sponsored by the Sycuan Casino, that is: a business run by a Native American tribe, the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation.

But I’m going to focus here on private giving, which is on the rise and about to take over from corporations as the biggest source of donation. In 2010, according to Giving USA’s Annual Report, 81% of US giving came from individuals, 14% from foundations. In Australia also, as Brook Turner reported in The Australian Financial Review (20 June 2011): ‘Individuals and foundations are poised to overtake companies as the biggest supporters of major arts companies…’

With businessman Harold Mitchell commissioned by Australia’s Federal Government in April to review private sector support for the arts and due to hand down his report, it may be interesting to consider how philanthropy works in the United States. They’ve been doing it a lot longer and on a much larger scale than Australia. Are there any lessons for us in their experience?

In many respects, Australia and the US have similar ideas about charity. Our ideas of charitable behaviour stem from similar notions of social improvement. In both countries, funnily enough, our definitions of charitable activities can be referred back to a 1601 parliamentary statute brought in to redress ‘the Misemployment of Landes Goodes and Stockes of Money heretofore given to Charitable Uses.’ Back then those charitable uses included ‘Releife of aged impotent and poore people, …Schooles of Learninge…’, even ‘Mariages of poore Maides’. And both Australia and the US believe you should get a tax deduction for a charitable gift. Over the years both countries have refined what is a charity for tax-deductible purposes, what in the US is termed a 501(c)(3) company after the subsection of the US tax code that defines recognised recipients.

It’s always been easy to include organisations that deal in health and welfare in such lists. It has often been harder to include the arts. But the US list is more generous. It includes such organisations as: mutual ditch or irrigation companies ‘if 85 percent or more of the income consists of amounts collected from members for the sole purpose of meeting losses and expenses’ or ‘cemetery companies…’ – and it has long specified literary pursuits for example.  The other big differences are that in the US you can also earn income from your gift – and recognition is okay.

Perhaps Americans have a broader list of tax-deductible charities because they want to encourage individuals to support social endeavour rather than the federal government. Australia, of course, is different. One of the most intriguing conversations I’ve had in the US was with a Tea Party supporter who said he would move to Australia ‘if this dang country keeps going the way it’s going.’ I had to tell him that while he enjoyed his time in Sydney and the Barrier Reef, most Australians tolerate, welcome, even seek a higher level of government assistance.

Or, well, did once. Private support is on the rise, and is bound to be a greater source of funding in the future. Is it safe to rely on yet? According to Valerie Wilder, in The Australian Ballet’s public submission to the Mitchell Report: ‘If the recent flurry of press articles on philanthropy in Australia is to be believed, high net worth individuals in this country are not yet contributing at anywhere near capacity’.

Perhaps it is time to offer some of the benefits that US companies are allowed to offer – and advertise. Check out the Met’s website. With an organisation like the Metropolitan Opera you can be acknowledged, earn income and receive a tax deduction at the same time. It’s all explained to you there, on a webpage. Perhaps a Charitable Lead Trust is what you want. As the Met’s site says:

Assets are placed into a charitable lead trust and the trust makes annual payments to the Metropolitan Opera for a specified term of years, often 10 to 15. After that, the assets are returned either to you or to your individual beneficiaries. These trusts are an excellent way to transfer appreciating property (preferably income-producing) to beneficiaries while supporting the Metropolitan Opera. They are a particularly effective means of reducing, or possibly eliminating, the estate and/or gift tax on the eventual transfer of these assets to your beneficiaries…

Or, is a Charitable Remainder Trust more your caper? You can click on the Gift Calculator. If you want simply to give, the Met’s site will tell you exactly what you get for your nominated amount, including assistance with ticket exchanges and seating improvements, donor recognition, and attendance at exclusive receptions, general rehearsals, closed rehearsals and even private coaching sessions with singers. As well, the Met’s website will tell you what portion of your gift, given these benefits, is not available for a Tax deduction.

In 2010, the Metropolitan Opera broke fundraising records. They made $182 million in contributions, a 50% increase on the previous year. It could be credited to the broadening of their donor base through their live broadcasts into cinemas around the country, or individuals ‘stepping up to the plate’. I wonder if it also has something to do with the clarity of their website.

It does seem that philanthropic giving in the US is not as altruistic as in Australia (although there are donors who eschew benefits), but with their ability to attract more people US organisations have more potential to create a community around their artform. If you give in the US you also have a chance to make your mark as a stakeholder. At a certain level of giving, you gain entry to the board. One organisation quoted me $5000 as the price of board membership. I immediately thought, ‘I could become a player here.’

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Boston Symphony Orchestra Ozawa Hall at dusk. Photo: Steve Rosenthal. Courtesy BSO.

Of course it’s all hard work.  Fundraising is more than half of what a US CEO does. The million dollar donors want to talk to him or her. And then there are the huge Development departments, the engine rooms of the organisation, ‘where the energy comes from,’ says Anne Midgette, music critic for The Washington Post, ‘where the income of these organisations is pursued with a lot of muscle.’

Some orchestras in the US, such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, are wholly reliant on themselves to raise their funds. How does the pressure fall on the individual employee?

Barbara Hanson is Major Gifts Officer at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with specific responsibility for Tanglewood, the BSO’s summer home in western Massachusetts. A big part of looking after donors is making them feel welcome. Says Hanson, ‘All of our overseers and our trustees have a staff person who is their contact. I have my own list. Basically “I’m your girl”. If these donors have ticketing or other requests, for example, ‘I don’t handle their requests myself. I can’t get in and print out a ticket, but I will go into the box office and sit with the box office manager because they will leave their requests with me and that sort of thing. And I get to know people very well. It’s so unbelievably stimulating and exhausting – and exciting.’

Part of looking after donors for Hanson involves travel. A great many Tanglewood supporters come from New York or northern New Jersey (about two hours’ drive away). ‘In fact, I go to New York for a short period of time every month. I go to Florida in March usually for about a week and see supporters who are wintering down there. I mean lunches and dinners with people, or coffee, or just catch up. We work around an event or two. The Pops goes down every other year and we go with them and see folks and just maintain contact. They might ask, “How’s the season going in Boston? Is anything new coming up for Tanglewood?’ I fill them in if they ask about specific things. And then the same goes for New York. It’s having a presence because certainly they don’t forget about Tanglewood in the winter time but it’s very different once they go back to those lives because also a lot of our supporters are Metropolitan Opera supporters.’

So it’s getting to know your own list of donors and trustees. But how do you, tactfully, work out their giving potential?

‘Well we have a research person on staff, so we try and find out someone’s capacities because, you know, it’s funny. I’ve never asked anyone for a million dollars but there are people who if you asked them for a million they might just keel over and land on the floor. And there are others who, even if they didn’t have that capacity, would be very flattered you would think that they did. So that’s where the relationships come in, getting to know people, finding out how much an institution means to them. You want to know how to approach someone when you’re going to ask them for a big gift because you don’t want to leave money on the table and you don’t want to insult someone. As I’ve been told from the very beginning, when you’re talking to someone about a gift it should never come as a surprise.’

And, says Mi Ryung Roman, Director of Development at New York-based Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, ‘Every board member has an expectation that they’re either going to give or find people – “give or get”. Your most important relationship is with the board and knowing who they are and what they do.’

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But why do people give? Deborah R. Card, Executive Director of the Seattle Symphony, once said, ‘People almost never give just because they have the spare cash and they need a place to stash it’. There is a range of reasons for philanthropic giving. For some, it’s the benefits. ‘At Tanglewood,’ says Hanson, ‘we give the benefit of parking and ticketing.’ But, she concedes, there are some who decline benefits. They don’t come to Donor Dinners, for example. Orpheus Chamber Orchestra offers ‘side by sides’. ‘We can offer our top donors the chance to sit onstage next to a musician during a rehearsal, so they can be in it and feel what it’s like,’ says Mi Ryung Roman. ‘Orpheus has the advantage of offering unique opportunities, being a chamber orchestra.’

A lot of the motivation can be summarised as ‘the experience of feeling involved’. So, do donors need the tax breaks? Yes, says music critic, Anne Midgette, pointing out that ‘tax breaks are the state subsidy in America’.

‘I think without a tax break people would be less ready to give $10 million. It’s hard to say because I can’t speak for the super-rich. But I also think motivations are never one-sided. There’s always a complex network of: because your name goes on the building, because it feels good to be a patron to your community, because you get a tax break. You know – win-win. The tax break is not the major reason. It is a reason. It is part of the constellation of perks that make people happy to do it.’

I asked one Chair why he donates. Charles Metcalf is chair of Opera New Jersey, which is based in the beautiful university town of Princeton (once home to Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein), nestled between the larger cities of New York and Philadelphia. ‘I basically give some kind of donation to any arts organisation where I’m a regular subscriber,’ he says. His General Director, Richard Russell, interjects: ‘One board member at an organisation I used to work for said to me they came to the board because they were interested intellectually about learning how an arts company runs. That was something they wanted to do in their retirement. There’s a social caché of being on the board of Metropolitan Opera that we can’t duplicate here, but luckily we have board members who are committed to seeing opera in this area’.

People with enough money to give and the wherewithal to make it work for them – I could imagine a great generative potential for an organisation embracing knowledgeable people who know where to place their money. But what about the dominant personality?

Charles Metcalf: ‘There’s a sense in which you don’t want to be a one-dominant donor place. It can get a bit despotic. But sometimes it’s a dominant donor, sometimes it’s someone who’s been the director for 35 years.’ He and Richard chuckle. Richard explains, ‘There’s a great interest in Gilbert and Sullivan in the Princeton area and Chuck doesn’t have a great love for that work.’ And this time Metcalf interjects: ‘But I support it.’

What about the people who just have ‘spare cash’? Anne Midgette offers a cautionary tale about a donor she spoke to some years ago. ‘I asked her, “What conductors do you like?” And she said, “Oh honestly, you know to me it’s all just beautiful music.” And I thought, “It’s so much like a function of a social place.” I mean, that’s what orchestras have to worry about. The next generation coming up does care about what kind of music they’re hearing.’

Which must mean it’s going to become harder to extract money. I imagine it already is. I talked to a woman from Minneapolis who was going to New York precisely to raise funds for an organisation she’d started. We both talked about the ‘ask’ and how difficult that might be. At what moment do you say, ‘So, the reason I’m here is…?’

But this doesn’t seem to faze the Development people I’ve spoken to. Says Barbara Hanson: ‘I mean I’m a development person. People know what that means. If I’m spending a lot of time with them or having pointed conversations with them about their philanthropy, eventually it’s going to come to “Will you give us this, or can we talk about a long-term gift or that sort of thing?” And I’ve had people say, “We both know what this conversation is about. Why don’t you come to the point?” To me that’s wonderful. It’s called “thank you!”

Says Richard Russell: ‘there is a continuum from single ticket buyers to subscribers who then become donors. So the idea is to capitalise upon their interest to begin with. You’re not trying cultivate people who are not already attached to the organisation, or at least have no interest.’

Mi Ryung Roman: ‘I think the most fun part of my job is it feels like matchmaking. It often makes the “ask” not a scary thing to do. It takes a lot of research and conversation and learning about someone beyond their obvious association. Let’s say you’re a subscriber: do you love music enough to have your kids learn it? Was your own upbringing around music? Do you support other performing arts organisations? I personally have a musical background, but it’s the art of relationships management that counts. The artform speaks for itself.’

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Or does it? Does this mean donors and board members who will push the orchestra beyond its standard and arguably petrifying repertoire and make it a living institution in the 21^st century, an attractive proposition for the next generation of donors? I spoke to Jesse Rosen, President and CEO of the League of American Orchestras, the advocacy and research organisation for orchestras in the United States: ‘I think in some sense having a large proportion of private support has an energising effect. Your donors and patrons are not just people who give money, but people with perspective and points of view and varying strains of thought and belief. So they have some sway and some influence over direction. They’re voices in the orchestral organisation and arguably through that process orchestras have an accountability to them that keeps orchestras connected to current, contemporary thinking. The other side of this though, which will be contradictory but I think that both things are true, is that the absence of government subsidy means that orchestras operate with an extremely narrow margin for risk, and every program has to meet very stringent revenue targets. Room for experimentation is really quite limited.’

So how diverse are their ‘strains of thought’? There is Midgette’s ‘to me it’s all just beautiful music’ type of donor. But Rosen and I spoke at length about the Cleveland Orchestra’s expansion to Miami, where the orchestra has its own Miami board and donors. ‘The driver for Cleveland going to Miami was the erosion of the population base and wealth in Cleveland itself; its capacity to support an orchestra at the level to which it’s been supported, and they went into a market with no professional orchestra’.

But it seems the Miami venture has had an effect on repertoire and outreach. Says Rosen: ‘What Cleveland realised is that if they were going to be successful in Miami, that they had to build relationships there, not just funding relationships but really make themselves part of the community. So their residencies in Miami are quite extensive in terms of teaching masterclasses, public symposia, partnerships with schools and other organisations. They’ve appointed a conductor with a specialty or special knowledge and experience with Latin American repertoire [Costa Rican Giancarlo Guerrero, who conducted the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in May 2011]. So they have in fact planted themselves there as though they want to stick around and it’s led the musicians and management both to really increase their connection to the Cleveland community.’

This sets up an inspirational image of an imaginative orchestra operating with a flexible and knowledgeable board and set of donors to respond skilfully to a unique set of circumstances. What if, like Hollywood, the boards and donors (think of them as ‘producers’) were knowledgeable peddlers of the product, drawing on deeper and deeper knowledge of the greater society they were beginning to incorporate? But there have been and continue to be risks with philanthropy.

You have to be sensitive, observes Mi Ryung Roman, aware of the demands on New York’s much-requested donors. ‘There are high-profile individuals who are hit up by every organisation in town.’ And there are many calls on their interests. ‘Someone says, “I give the bulk of my charitable giving to Dana-Farber [the Cancer Institute]”,’ says Barbara Hanson. ‘I’m going to argue with that?!’ Charles Metcalf chooses his words carefully: ‘What would be a risk for me in giving to the arts is a substantial weakening of the social and health protection network of the less well-to-do; the pressure will be on me to divert.’

Perhaps the biggest risk is the decline amongst the current giving age-group. ‘It’s not presumed,’ says Jesse Rosen, ‘that as wealth transfers from one generation to the next that the coming generations will be placing the same priority on giving to the orchestra and the ballet, the opera, etc…’

You still get instances like the anonymous donor who matched every dollar individually donated to Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s Project 440 composer commissioning project. ‘But,’ says Anne Midgette, ‘it’s many organisations’ goal to break away from “heroic giving”,’ which she defines as the sort of donor who will pull out the cheque book when an organisation is a million dollars short and say, ‘Alright, one more time’.

I mention to her a May 7th San Francisco Chronicle article in which David Gockley, General Director of the San Francisco Opera, worried about relying so heavily on 11 top donors, and said, ‘What we need to do is for each wealthy donor, to find 10 people who are interested in opera and get them to give one-tenth of what their parents gave.’

Midgette: ‘But I think you’re going to have to find a hundred people who’ll give $100,000. I say over and over there’s so much emphasis on education and getting young people into the orchestras. What they need to be doing is cultivating people between 40 and 50. That’s the generation that they’re going to lose and that’s the generation that’s poised to be donors.’

And they’ve got to make those people feel that they belong because ‘Orchestras have not done a lot to make their audiences feel like they belong in other ways. You know, there’s that whole format of the orchestra concert. You must behave in a certain way if you don’t want to look stupid. You must sit silently. You’ll often have music played at you that you don’t really like or want to hear. It’s a very oddly antagonistic relationship to the audience and so gaining entrée into a club that feels exclusive and a little bit scary is probably well worth the price. I think the biggest threat is that the billionaires of tomorrow are not going to have the same incentive to donate as the billionaires of today. And yet classical music is relatively cheap. I remember talking to a philanthropist in California, a young woman who got into commissioning music, saying “It’s so cheap. I can’t buy art like this but I can make all of these symphonies…”’

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Giving, of course, is meant to be America’s redistribution of wealth. Even so unsentimental a businessman as Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of the fathers of American capitalism, donated his flagship to the Union in 1862 and then, after the Civil War was over, endowed a university in the South as part of his own personal contribution to Reconstruction. In a sense, you are obliged to donate. ‘From those to whom much is given, much is expected,’ Rose Kennedy is supposed to have drummed into her children. Anti-governmentalism is an oft-observed feature of American life, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into anti-society, and most Americans acknowledge that they should give something back to their country. But is there anything my interviewees would want government to be doing?

Some envy Australia’s level of government support. When I ask Richard Russell if he thinks there would be any disadvantages to 37% support, he thinks hard for a minute. ‘I’m struggling to find a “con”.’ Finally, he says, ‘I think you’re obviously subject to political patronage if that’s the case.’ Australians would probably advise that this is no more problematic than the influence of big donors or longstanding music directors. Opera New Jersey does say however that the 5% they get from the state legitimises them to a helpful degree. Says Charles Metcalf; ‘If you get government funding, that is a good housekeeping seal of approval that channels donors to you, or has the potential to do that.’

Jesse Rosen sees some practical benefits in holding onto the sort of data collection and analysis and advocacy that the National Endowment for the Arts is capable of. Anne Midgette is a little more caustic about calls for more government support. ‘Well everyone in America likes to pontificate about how the government should support us. It’s never going to happen. What would I like to see? I’d like to see more dynamic art. I’d like to see less timidity. Nobody’s going to want to go to classical music if it’s “white bread”.’

What most would probably not want is for President Obama to cap the Charitable Gift Deduction, a prospect that was raised again most recently when the White House jobs plan was presented to a joint session of congress. Senate Democrats proposed acceptable alternative ways to fund the package, but some Not-for-Profits (or, rather, 501(c)(3)s to give them their US name) are still nervous about a measure the president has mentioned several times.

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You get a sense from studying US philanthropy that when the system works, it works well. But even though Australia’s Productivity Commission said in January 2010: ‘[the reason] governments provide subsidies to the private sector rather than simply increasing state provision is that it can result in better targeting of resources’, I do see holes. A system based on individuals’ predilections is not necessarily a wholistic approach. What happens if you have a disease that doesn’t pique the interest of someone who can pay for the research? I think of the ‘Adopt a Highway’ movement. Around America you see signs acknowledging the people who have subsidised a tract of road – the Central Coast Republican Party, Employees of Hearst’s Castle, North Malibu Hair Salon… But you probably should ask if the interstate highway system could have been built this way. Who provides the overview?

Philanthropy probably won’t replace government involvement in Australia (at least for a long while to come), but it certainly provides a high level of vibrancy in the United States. And hey, on just about every block in America, it’s part of the daily streetscape.

Gordon Kalton Williams
© 2011

Gordon Williams is currently based in Savannah, Georgia. He is blogging his broader impressions of the US on his website at www.gordonkaltonwilliams.com

Further reading:

Metropolitan Opera’s donor page

http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/support/planned_gifts/index.aspx

Acknowledgements: I’d like to thank Robert Clarke for his advice on this article.

Summit Rundown

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Announcing the winner of the 2011 ABC Symphony Australia Young Performers Awards.

The Grand Final of the ABC Symphony Australia Young Performers Awards was held last night in the Concert Hall of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre.

Three finalists battled it out with astonishing musical skill and fierce competition for the title. Nicholas Russoniello was named the winner with his stunning performance of [insert concerto title here] accompanied by the Queensland Symphony Orchetsra and conducted by Edvard Tchivzhel.

After winning their respective Stage III category finals, pianist Nicholas Young (20 yrs), saxophonist Nicholas Russoniello (26 yrs) and violinist Emily Sun (20 yrs) performed their concertos with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Edvard Tchivzhel, in the prestigious Grand Final of the 2011 ABC Symphony Australia Young Performers Awards in Brisbane last night, Saturday 3 September.

Kate Lidbetter announced Nicholas Russoniello as the winner awarding him/her with a $20,000 cash prize, multiple recordings of the winning performance and valuable opportunities for future concert engagements with major Australian symphony orchestras.

Nicholas Russoniello from Wollongong NSW commenced his studies in saxophone at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Music (Performance) with first class honours.

As a student, Nicholas’ distinguishing talent earned him numerous awards and scholarships which enabled him to pursue international study in the UK and France. Nicholas is a celebrated performer and regularly plays with the ensemble Duo Histoire in concerts around Australia. His merits also include performing as a soloist with the Orchestra Dell’Accademia Musicale di Schio, Vicenza and the Syrinx Quartet, for the Società Dei Concerti Milan. In 2011 Nicholas became a member of the saxophone quartet Continuum Sax.