Friday, October 03, 2003 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Music to Their Ears

Las Vegas Philharmonic's practice of giving music the top billing drawing in fans

The string section for the Las Vegas Philharmonic rehearses for the first concert of its fifth season. Photo by SAMANTHA CLEMENS / REVIEW-JOURNAL. Conductor Hal Weller organized what is now the Philharmonic in the summer of 1998, after Las Vegas' previous orchestra canceled a Fourth of July concert in the wake of labor disputes and insurmountable debt.

Itzhak Perlman can wait. De Ann Letourneau is packing the house.

The simple idea of giving the music itself top billing has kept the Las Vegas Philharmonic in the black for its first four seasons, without having to prop up its main-stage offerings with pops concerts or big-name guest artists.

"What's encouraging is that we haven't gone to the star system. People have attended because of the orchestra," says musical director Hal Weller, noting last season's finale drew an overflow crowd for Letourneau, the Philharmonic's own concertmaster, as the featured violin soloist.

If there's a formula to explain the orchestra's success to date, it might be, "Keep the experiments offstage."

The orchestra launches its fifth season on Saturday at Artemus Ham Hall, sticking to its philosophy of anchoring each program with a classic the most casual orchestra listener would stand a chance of knowing -- in Saturday's case, Dvorak's "New World" symphony -- and balancing it with something more contemporary (this time, a Samuel Barber piano concerto) for the more adventurous.

"We are playing the hits. We make no secret of that," associate conductor Dick McGee says of the organization that formed in the dying days of the Nevada Symphony Orchestra (formerly the Las Vegas Symphony), after that group canceled a 1998 summer concert series.

A common, perhaps oversimplified criticism of the old orchestra was that it neglected the classics in its attempt to put itself on the national map by promoting the new works of obscure composers.

But the struggles of other orchestras around the country are a reminder that "live symphonic music in and of itself is rare," McGee says.

Weller says the organization met this year's season-ticket goal by July, and that subscription seats should fill close to 1,000 of the 1,850 seats at Ham hall on Saturday.

Ticket sales, however, only account for about a third of the orchestra's revenue, and don't begin to pay the $50,000-to-$60,000 it costs to stage each concert. Fund raising is where the new ideas come in.

A Nov. 3 golf tournament with a $300 buy-in is the latest one from an administration that has come up with such events as a "connoisseur" series of small concerts in private homes at $125 per ticket.

Philip Koslow, who became the Philharmonic's executive director in January after managing the Tallahassee Symphony, admits it's easier to drum up support for a nonprofit that's not "struggling, begging or posting deficits." The orchestra closed its fourth year with "a modest surplus" on its $1 million operating budget.

"It helps me when I'm out there," Koslow says. "Success is a great sales tool. No one likes to throw good money after bad."

Corporate supporters had reached that frustration point with the old orchestra, which formed in 1980 and ran up a $200,000 debt within 10 years.

Weller was a Flagstaff, Ariz.-based conductor who had conducted "The Nutcracker" for Nevada Dance Theatre and spent a school year as a visiting professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

When he heard the orchestra had canceled its 1998 Fourth of July concert because of a labor dispute, Weller pulled the nucleus of the current orchestra together in nine days. The older symphony closed in 1999.

McGee says it was his idea to pursue the trust of longtime musicians who had seen any hopes of collecting back pay vanish with the old orchestra. "I suggested we do the unthinkable and request a collective bargaining agreement with (the Las Vegas Musicians Union) right up front."

Since then, he says the orchestra has a healthy give-and-take with the union. The orchestra first challenged, then conceded to the union's tenure plan, while the union tolerated two years of wage freezes.

Players are still paid "per service" rather than a full-time wage, but rehearsals, concerts and outreach programs for students add up to about 50 pay dates per year.

One of the boldest decisions in the early days was not to stage a pops series, which was one of the few bright spots in the financial picture of the old orchestra. In most cities, pops series are built around visiting headliners, such as the Smothers Brothers or Roy Clark, who already vie for bookings on the Strip.

"They don't do Beethoven and we don't do Wayne Newton," Koslow says to address an oft-cited attitude -- which Koslow terms "sort of a mythology" -- that gaming corporations fear they will subsidize a competitor if they support an orchestra.

But it hasn't stopped the orchestra from pursuing talks with the Henderson Pavilion about a "light classics" series that wouldn't involve celebrities.

The Philharmonic also is keeping a hopeful eye on the proposal for a downtown performing arts center. "If that comes online, I think we're really gonna fly," says Koslow.

For now, the orchestra contents itself with "careful, manageable growth," as Koslow terms it, that includes the addition of a volunteer chorus in time for the Mozart concert next March.

The next big step would be to add Sunday matinee performances to the current Saturday evening concerts. It would amortize rehearsal costs, but the fear is that it might also split the current audience in half, McGee notes.

But then, he adds, "I was the one who warned them, `We'll never have more than 600 or 700 people per concert,' and we've never had that few."

Weller would like to take the orchestra on tour as "ambassadors of culture" to further dash "whatever negative stereotypes about this community there might be."

In lieu of that, the Philharmonic has already proved it can hold its own amid the distractions of the casinos. "With the intense focus on entertainment on the Strip," Weller says, "the arts have been forced to have an inferiority complex.

"We had to be resolved not to be inferior."