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Can the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Rise Above the Financial Crunch?

There’s a sense of urgency at the DSO, where expenses are up and donations are down.
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photography by Dan Sellers

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Decision Time

According to Blaine Nelson, the past chairman of the executive board, van Zweden’s arrival has “transformed” the Dallas symphony, quickly catapulting it into the ranks of “the great orchestras in the U.S.” Now, with corporate and family budgets under pressure, Nelson says, the city is facing a crucial choice: either support the symphony financially—or fall back to second-tier status.

“The real question Dallas has to answer is: Do we want to be compared with the Fort Worth orchestra—or with the Chicago orchestra or with the New York Philharmonic?” Nelson says. “That’s the choice. There’s nothing in between.”

Traditionally, the top five U.S. orchestras have been those in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. Expand the list to 10 and the names often include San Francisco, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Minnesota—and, sometimes, Dallas. Some skeptics, though, wonder whether a preoccupation with such comparisons is useful.

Judith Kurnick, vice president for strategic communications with the League of American Orchestras in New York, says that ranking orchestras—aside from a certain value in helping to attract good musicians—is an “old-fashioned way” of measuring value.

“There’s no way to say where Dallas ranks,” Kurnick says. “Orchestras need to serve the communities they’re in. What kind of experience do people come away with? If the larger world is impressed, that’s wonderful.”

Interestingly, van Zweden seems to agree. “I know that certain people around the orchestra and the audiences like to see us in the top three, four, five, six, I don’t know,” the music director says, sitting at a desk in his modest office inside the Meyerson. “If I’m going to think about that, then I’m on the wrong road. Making music is not a world championship football game.

“What I do understand is that the quality of the orchestra is a very interesting road to walk together,” he continues. “If you hear the orchestra when I start, two and a half years ago, and now, you’d say there is quite a difference. But you need to work for that and to earn it—every month, every week, every day, every hour.”

For the future, van Zweden says, one of his main goals is to involve more young people in the DSO—and, in fact, a program to do just that will be launched in September. He also would like to give the musicians a pay increase, he says—if and when the economy improves. “The other step is that we stay financially healthy,” he says, “and that’s a big task for Doug.” 

Asked whether he has any role in that effort, van Zweden says: “It’s very important that the quality of the orchestra is going up. If we have a stock market that’s going up, or down, I am able to do this with the orchestra. Because if the quality of the orchestra stays the same, or will go down, then the president of the orchestra has no reason to ask for more money. That is my first task.

“On the other hand, I understand that Doug and I, we are together in this thing,” van Zweden says. “And so whenever I need him, he’s there for me; whenever he needs me, I’m there for him. It’s a partnership. So it’s very important that we have this compact, and talk about things and inspire each other to solve certain difficulties.”

Adams, an experienced businessman who’s halfway through a four-year contract with the DSO, by now is intimately acquainted with those “difficulties”—and with the unique challenges of nonprofit management. Formerly the president and general manager of KXAS-TV (Channel 5) for nine years, Adams was general manager of the DSO from 1999 to 2002 under then-president and CEO Eugene Bonelli. He served as president and CEO of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in Denver for six years before returning in September of 2008 to lead the Dallas orchestra.

This time around, he says, the DSO’s potential—and the potential pitfalls—loom large. Blaine Nelson also hints as much when he’s asked about the orchestra’s health. “I think it’s premature to sound any alarm bells. I don’t sense a panic. I’d call it a sense of urgency,” Nelson says, choosing his words carefully. “We’ve got to perform, finally.”

Sitting in the white-tablecloth restaurant at the art museum, where he’s sometimes grown frustrated asking people for money, Adams seems confident about the orchestra’s situation but well aware of what’s at stake. “There aren’t many things in town that have the potential to be the best in the world,” he says. “We have a chance to do something really good, and we’ll do it.”

At the same time, he adds, “this is the hardest job I’ve ever had. If somebody in my position messed up badly at the TV station, [KXAS owner] GE is not going to go out of business, the station’s not going out of business. One guy probably loses his job.

“In this case, the stakes are really big,” Adams says. “There’s not a huge net under you. If you really mess up, worst-case scenario, the city loses its orchestra, and a bunch of people are out of work. So the responsibility here is far greater.”

Where Have All the Donors Gone?


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photography by Elizabeth Lavin
Has development of the AT&T Performing Arts Center “sucked all the money” out of Dallas companies and wealthy individuals, leaving much less for other worthy, recession-battered arts nonprofits like the Dallas Symphony Orchestra?

That’s a charge you often hear, invariably made off the record, by players in the local philanthropy scene.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s also a view that’s flatly rejected by William “Bill” Lively, who’s currently raising money for Super Bowl XLV after agreeing in 2000 to oversee fundraising for the performing arts center.

During Lively’s multiyear tenure, more than $334 million was raised to build the center, including at least 130 separate gifts of $1 million or more.


“We did not ‘suck all the philanthropy money’ out of the system,” Lively says. “Of the [people who made the] $1 million gifts, 80 percent had never given before for the arts.”

In a difficult economy like the current one, he adds, what’s most important is that nonprofits become creative in their funding pitches: “You’ve got to be innovative and find new sources of money.”

Myrna Schlegel, a former chair of the Dallas symphony board, says the current climate is a “tough” one for arts fundraisers.

“Over the last five years a lot of money was poured into—not necessarily given yet to—the new performing arts center. And that’s wonderful,” she says. “My concern is that while all this was being done, the corporate organizations and people do not forget the symphony, and the strength of the symphony for our city.

“The challenge is to get [Dallas] to realize the importance of that.”


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