SYMPHONY’S MUSICAL RISE IN FORTUNE HAS NOT TRANSLATED INTO FINANCIAL SUCCESS
Brian Whitwham, Record Staff
The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario)
October 5, 2006 Thursday
Final Edition
>From hockey rinks to world stage
For more than 60 years, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony’s life in
the community has been like an evening with an orchestra.
There have been moments that were bright, periods that were dark and
times that people wondered what would happen next.
The orchestra that played its first concert at a Kitchener hockey
rink has since toured internationally.
It has gone from three concerts a year in the 1940s to more than 90
performances each season.
But its financial performance has yo-yoed and, at times, the 52-piece
orchestra’s problems have sparked public feuds — two high-profile
conductors left amid controversy — within the symphony.
Now it’s asking for a $2.5-million lifeline by the end of October and,
once again, no one knows what will happen next.
THE OVERTURE
The orchestra was formed in 1945 after the director of the Philharmonic
Choir decided a symphony should accompany the choir at its April
concert. The show was a success, drawing more than 2,000 people to
a rink near Queen and Charles streets in Kitchener.
The orchestra followed it with a sold-out concert that October.
Into the late 1960s, the symphony was a volunteer organization with
about 85 players. They generally performed four Sunday afternoon
concerts each year at the Lyric Theatre.
The person credited with taking the orchestra to the next level
is Raffi Armenian, who took over in 1971 as artistic director and
immediately changed the symphony.
He started with a series of auditions, which cut the orchestra in
half. The remaining musicians became paid members. Within a few years,
Armenian launched an extended evening concert series that kicked off
with famed Russian cellist Vladimir Orloff as the headliner.
By 1980, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony was playing 50 concerts a
year. Armenian stayed at the helm for 22 years and helped the orchestra
reach several milestones, including its first international tour,
to Spain, in 1984.
Statistics in the early 1990s showed that, based on ticket sales, the
symphony had the highest market penetration of any orchestra in Canada.
THE CRESCENDO
The early 1990s was a period of financial instability for the orchestra
as it struggled to build its reputation and handle a growing debt load.
Armenian played his final concert in 1993 and was replaced by Chosei
Komatsu, an internationally-renowned conductor, who was expected to
take the symphony to the next level.
Upon accepting the job, Komatsu, a native of Japan, said, "I think
this is a job every conductor of my generation in North America —
even the world — would want."
But the symphony lost more than $100,000 in 1994. It posted a small
surplus of about $27,600 in 1995 but it was holding an accumulated
deficit of nearly $690,000.
Komatsu’s term was supposed to last until 2001 but the
Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony’s board ended it in 1998 amid an
organizational restructuring.
The move was caused in part by a dispute between Komatsu and managing
director Mark Jamison, who resigned in November 1998.
Komatsu later issued a statement slamming the board for putting a
"gag order" on him. But his dispute with the symphony was nothing
compared to the war that erupted around his successor.
Martin Fischer-Dieskau assumed the position of conductor in 2001,
with a resume that boasted leadership of 50 major orchestras. A
native of Germany, Fischer-Dieskau also spent time as the assistant
conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and said he was the kind
of conductor who wanted to stay out of the musicians’ way.
The board fired him on November 27, 2003. Within days, a citizens’
group was lobbying for his reinstatement. Fischer-Dieskau returned
to Canada in December to convince the board to reverse the decision.
In-fighting got so bad that the symphony’s entire board of directors
resigned in February 2004. Board chair Karen Wilkinson said the move
had to be made to "mend the rift among association members . . . and
be in the true, long-term interest of the symphony."
Fischer-Dieskau also hit the symphony with a $1.5-million lawsuit.
The suit was settled with an exchange of apologies in January 2005.
The symphony and the conductor went their separate ways.
THE FINAL CURTAIN?
Before the Fischer-Dieskau affair, things had been looking up. The
symphony had reached a surplus of $33,183 in 2003, which it put toward
its debt.
Over four years, that debt had been reduced from $735,000 to less
than half, about $350,000.
The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony also managed a $57,000 surplus in
2004, even though the controversy with its former conductor had
cost $244,000.
Since then, ticket sales have dropped and some fundraising campaigns
haven’t reached their goals.
The Ontario Arts Council cut its grant to the symphony by about
$70,000 in 2005.
The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony said its deficit has ballooned to
$1.2 million and if it doesn’t reach its goal by the end of October,
the organization will declare bankruptcy.