Symphony striking the right chord in challenging times

From the outside, the Seattle Symphony is a vast sea of penguinlike tuxes and black dresses, all sitting before a maestro whose face is only occasionally visible to the audience.

On the inside, it's a teeming, opinionated, often contentious family of brilliant talent and kaleidoscopic backgrounds: peach-fuzzed youngsters, grizzled veterans, hikers, bikers, poodle trainers, chess masters, Mariners fans and a mom with triplet boys. They're the cultural home team, united by their zest for great symphonic music and their desire to bring it to the people of this region.

Listen to Michael Crusoe, the orchestra's timpanist: "I'd love to feed everyone who was hungry, and have them come to my house for food. I can't do that — but I can feed them through music, as a player in the Seattle Symphony. I feel very driven to do that."

The Symphony, which launches its 100th season on Saturday, has been feeding the masses almost as long as Washington has been a state. The orchestra represented Seattle in the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1906; raised the city's spirits through two world wars; bolstered its image in the 1980s through tours and recordings; and helped revitalize the downtown with the highly regarded Benaroya Hall (1998).

It has connected citizens of every background, and connected our community with the rest of the world; it has also made possible the excellence of such sister organizations as Seattle Opera.

The Symphony has celebrated the good times — the opening of the Century 21 World's Fair, launching the KeyArena — and consoled us for unimaginable loss, performing the solemn Mozart Requiem in Safeco Field even as the Symphony Chorale organized worldwide Requiem commemorations in nearly every time zone last Sept. 11.

Yet, on the cusp of that 100th anniversary, the orchestra and music director Gerard Schwarz are weathering some serious challenges. As our economy falters, so does the orchestra's stream of contributed income; later this month, administrators will announce that last year's $719,000 shortfall is compounded by an additional $400,000-$500,000 deficit this year, on a budget of $21.8 million.

As an alarming number of orchestras all around the country go bankrupt, and some experts forecast the demise of the American symphony orchestra altogether, the Seattle Symphony also must replace two top administrators who left to join two of the country's so-called Big Five orchestras: executive director Deborah Card, who was recruited by the Chicago Symphony, and marketing director Sandi MacDonald, who went off to the Cleveland Orchestra.

Will the Seattle Symphony make it? Will there be a second centennial in the next century?

Don't bet against this band. For one thing, although contributed income is down, the number of individual contributors has risen steadily each year, and ticket income also has gone up. Fueled by the Three Bs (Bach, Beethoven and Brahms), and by such exciting programming as last year's Silk Road Festival of cross-cultural music, audiences keep coming back for more.

And the musicians, who literally live for music, are sure the demand will never go away.

"I can't imagine the great works of music ever waning in their attractiveness and their ability to speak to people," says Zartouhi Dombourian-Eby, the orchestra's piccolo player and the mom of two aspiring young musicians.

"Music has the power to purify your heart," says cellist Vivian Gu, who grew up in Shanghai and joined the Symphony nine years ago.

"Great music is like your spiritual food. You need regular food for your body, but you need music for your spirit. In every country, no matter what language you speak, you can speak the language of music just by playing and listening."

Even the veterans who've seen it all, like John Cerminaro, 56, who's been principal French horn of great orchestras from coast to coast, thinks Seattle's vital signs are good.

"This orchestra's the exception," says Cerminaro, a dapper figure with a white goatee and his trademark round-lens glasses.

"We're doing well. We're like the Mariners: I think we have the talent to take the title. Still, I'm worried about the orchestra field in general."

Cerminaro is not alone in his concern. Citing such causes as the decline of wealthy-family patronage, waning corporate support, more competition for charitable dollars, and alienated audiences wary of the avant-garde, New York Times critic Bernard Holland recently declared, "American orchestras will no more grow than Mother Nature will take the liver spots off my hands.

"We have grown old together. Darwinism is at work, and American orchestras must adjust: to smaller dreams, fewer orchestras serving wider areas, fragmented listenerships, hopes for some kind of government help and, above all, a way of preserving the past, electronically if not by word of mouth."

Cellist Amos Yang, a newcomer who joined the Seattle Symphony last year, couldn't disagree more.

"Orchestras will survive and grow," Yang declares, "and they will do so by connecting with their communities even more. When you go out into schools and hospitals to play music, you see the tremendous impact it makes on people, especially when you take a little time to show them how music works.

"When I was at Juilliard, I got a scholarship to play in AIDS rehabilitation clinics, drug-rehab centers, shelters. I will never forget playing for those people, and the looks on their faces. I saw how great music could affect even people who are out of the loop of society.

"No, I'm not afraid of music dying out — not while the quality is high, as it is in the Symphony."

This centennial season may well be a crossroads for the Seattle Symphony nonetheless, and not only because the orchestra is posting its largest-ever deficit.

An East Coast tour (separately financed in advance) in March and April 2004 will take the orchestra and music director Schwarz to Carnegie Hall, where every serious orchestra comes to test its mettle, before audiences and critics who have heard it all.

A success at Carnegie could give the orchestra a tremendous boost, in morale, national reputation and possibly even the bottom line (everyone likes to fund a winner).

Schwarz thinks the Carnegie trip will be part of a gradual shift in the Symphony's fortunes.

"We're at the point where we've accomplished so much, and now we really need to position ourselves as one of the great orchestras of the world, artistically and in terms of our reputation. There's no reason why the West Coast should be the stepchild of the East. When you look at what's exciting in the orchestra world, you look to San Francisco and Seattle, and also Los Angeles to a degree."

What about the threatened extinction of the orchestra? Schwarz suggests it's too early to write any requiems for the Seattle Symphony, which recently was cited by The Baltimore Sun (along with the San Francisco Symphony) as one of few orchestras "routinely playing to packed houses."

"Throughout history, people from Leopold Mozart (the composer's father) on down have said that music is dying and there isn't an audience. Then symphonies were supposedly dying because of the rise of radio, then with records, then with CDs and with tremendous competition.

"We are so fortunate in terms of our audience; our subscriptions and ticket sales are better than just about any other orchestra in the country. That says a lot about the quality of the performances and the people who live in this town," Schwarz says.

"Will this orchestra be around for another 100 years? Yes, definitely," says cellist Gu.

"People cannot live without great music."

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com