Practicing the Business of Taste-Making : Four Southland impresarios juggle art and reality

Together, they control funds well in excess of $15 million annually. In booking their seasonal rosters of artists--particularly young ones--they affect hundreds of lives and careers. In choosing--as they must do with clocklike regularity--one composer or one string quartet or one pianist over another, they are taste makers. Powerful taste makers.

Wayne Shilkret, Erich Vollmer, Pebbles Wadsworth and Philip Westin are the executive directors of four of Southern California’s most visible concert presenters: the Ambassador International Cultural Foundation, the Orange County Philharmonic Society, UCLA Center for the Performing Arts and El Camino College, respectively.

Each one professes to run his or her operation “just like a business,” with every event charted and analyzed far in advance.

Yet beneath the surface of each business person, there is an idealist who sees the enlightenment of the audience as a mission. The basic problem each faces is: How to balance art and the buck, to take in enough money to pay one’s costs.

And all four point out that that problem never goes away and never gets easier.

The Ambassador Empire

Gliding across the city of Pasadena in a sleek and super-quiet BMW toward a favorite restaurant destination where he will be given the premier table, Wayne Shilkret complains that the emphasis should never be on administrators, but on musicians and dancers.

“I hate interviews! You should be talking to artists, not to me. They’re important. I’m just a manager.”

But a minute later, under the influence of hot bread and unsalted butter, the boyish-looking Shilkret--who came to Ambassador in 1977 after holding important managerial posts at the Kennedy Center and the Philadelphia Orchestra--grows more expansive. He starts to tell stories of his professional beginnings in the early 1950s, when, still in college, he worked for “Mr. Hurok,” the legendary Sol Hurok, who later became his mentor.

“Well, it wasn’t a bad year,” Shilkret says about 1988, “But not great either. We had a little slump. Mr. Hurok used to say, ‘A presidential (election) year is a difficult year for the arts.”

However good or bad it was, Shilkret and his staff predicted it. According to the executive director, every single event is computed, analyzed, accounted and probed long before it happens. And afterward, reanalyzed.

“It’s amazing how close we can predict actual attendance, walk-up business and revenue” though a surge of box-office business in January and February, 1989, was not predicted by Shilkret & Co., he admits. His Foundation staff is also small and close-knit. Shilkret’s two lieutenants are publicist/marketing director Samuel Lurie and concerts manager William Wiemhoff. Their input is important, he says, in planning future seasons.

Their opinions are reflected in every other aspect of the operation of Ambassador Foundation, sponsor of concerts at the 1,200-seat Ambassador Auditorium, the small College Recital Hall nearby, and occasional events at Pasadena Civic Auditorium and Shrine Auditorium.

Seated (earlier that day) at his large desk in a spacious office at the Ambassador administration building, Shilkret holds up a brochure for the springtime Gold Medal Series, and says, “This is my pet. This is one of the most important things I do.”

Even earlier, he has made a list of those aspects of impresarioship that give him the greatest pleasure.

In the No. 1 spot, ahead of “once-in-a-lifetime performances” and “making this work as a business,” is “discovering new artists.”

Now, just for a moment, he brags. “We spotted (the young American soprano) Aprile Millo. Ahead of the pack. One morning, a few years ago, Bill Wiemhoff came running into my office and said, ‘Wayne, you have to hear this tape!’

“Well, we get a lot of tapes, all of which we listen to, but some turn out to be, let’s say, less than real. Anyhow, we heard this one, it was definitely real, and some time later, we went to hear her in person. Even later, the Foundation funded her first professional recording. Now, she’s making it big, and we couldn’t be happier.”

In a more controversial area, Shilkret responds mildly regarding two recent, apparent breaches of exclusivity, that clause in every artist’s contract supposedly inserted to protect presenters from each other, and supposedly preventing artists’ appearances in nearby places within specified time periods.

Both have to do with recital appearances by American sopranos. In the first, in late September and early October, Leontyne Price appeared in Orange County, at Ambassador and at El Camino, all within seven days.

In the second, Faith Esham, long announced for a UCLA recital on Jan. 26, suddenly appeared on the Gold Medal series brochure from Ambassador, scheduled Jan. 23 (the UCLA date was canceled).

About Price, all three impresarios claimed not to know about the other appearances outside their own places. Shilkret, Vollmer and Westin each said something equivalent to: “Our audience is different from those other audiences anyhow, and we were probably unaffected by the triple appearance.”

Shilkret did say, re both Price and Esham, “From now on, we are asking every single (artists’) manager about duplications.” In the large picture, he adds, “exclusivity is a false issue. Most of the time, it doesn’t exist.”

About the Esham appearance, Shilkret explained: “Ambassador has an agreement with the Naumburg Foundation that we can present any of their winners. She won three years ago, but never was available. I didn’t know she was scheduled anywhere else. If it had been at UCLA earlier in the season, we would have canceled, because the agreement is (that) we present them so they can have the exposure and the review, and if they’ve already had a review, they don’t appear at Ambassador.”

His largest frustration, the soft-spoken administrator says, is that “Only a small percentage of the population is remotely interested in the performing arts. Add to that the fact that, in this (Southern California) market, the costs of advertising are extremely high. That’s frustrating.”

Wadsworth’s Domain

Overlooking Wilshire Boulevard and the overgrown, high-rising village of Westwood to the north and the sprawl of Brentwood to the west, Pebbles Wadsworth stands at a wide window on the sixth floor of the Unisys building and laments her staff’s displacement from the UCLA campus.

“We’ll get back, eventually. But we do feel cut off. And we’re forever trekking up to campus. Ah, well.”

Troubleshooting is what Wadsworth does, since her appointment as head of the Center for the Performing Arts in 1983. For 10 years before that she ascended the ladder that aspirant administrators in academia must climb.

What used to be the Committee on Fine Arts Productions has been streamlined; things may be controversial at Royce Hall or Wadsworth (no relation) Auditorium, but they’re no longer dowdy.

To an earlier generation, Pacific Rim was a tire company; thanks to people like Pebbles Wadsworth, one begins to see a concept in those words. Wadsworth works with funds entirely private--from a large chunk from Royce 270 (a support group), to a National Endowment for the Arts grant, to the chancellor’s discretionary fund (also private monies), etc. She is charged with balancing her budget, “One-hundred percent.” She says she does this while merely 48% of her revenue comes from box office.

“When you take risks, 48% is a very high percentage of box office. The NEA said it would not reward us unless we continue to take risks.”

A former visual artist who originally came to the university to study native American painting, and soon found herself the protegee of former Fine Arts Productions head Frances Inglis, Wadsworth sees the booking of events as the smallest part of her job.

“I see myself as a catalyst conductor. UCLA is unique in that we use the resources of our faculty in advisory capacities. They become our consultants, and advise us. In educational projects, we also work with the heads of unified school districts. It’s an orchestration of forces. I juggle.”

She says she has two goals as leader of the program that in 1988-89 has a budget of $6.5 million and next year, “If our fund raising is successful,” $7.1 million.

“First, to balance the classical and the traditional programming with the ethnic and the contemporary, and with new commissions.

“Second, to provide a continuing platform for young artists.”

Besides wanting to spread the word--so long unspread--that no tax dollars are spent at the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts, Wadsworth would also like the world to know that “We are not an academic unit.” A small point, perhaps, but one worth stating.

The commissioning program promises much. Wadsworth says she is forming a consortium consisting of UCLA, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan, Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center, to produce three to four new works a season, the works to travel from center to center. “This will soon be in place.”

Wadsworth says she builds a season by “looking at our missions. Where we’ve come from. What we need to continue. The balanced picture, not just for that one season, but in relation to where we want to be in five years. My job is much more intellectual than just filling in dates on a calendar.

“Do we succumb to pressures from artists managers, or the public, or the press? We try not to, though we pay attention to our critics. but no one can tell us what our mission is, because that’s what we work on, every day.”

She says she tries to be flexible enough to respond to trends in the arts or to new ways of doing business. “We found recently that our series sales were down, but our single-event ticket sales up. Instead of fighting it, we tried to think up fresh ways to take advantage of the situation.

“Singers’ recitals traditionally did poorly here. Suddenly, there’s a new, younger audience out there, and we’re doing business. That changes our perceptions, and how we handle the bookings.”

Right now, she works daily on the Pacific Rim festival scheduled for 1990. And dreams up new ways to serve a public she sees as growing every year.

“I want to make people aware of the richness in the arts of the Pacific Rim. I want to expand the financial horizons of our educational projects, while bringing more esoteric attractions to our auditoriums.” Does she have other goals?

“Yes. Before I am hit by a truck, I want the center to begin to build an endowment fund. When I am gone, all these projects should continue. Just in case. Nobody should forget how much there is to do.”

Business by Computer

On the eastern slope of Palos Verdes, with a sweeping view of the Long Beach-Los Angeles harbors and beyond, Philip Westin surveys his little plot of land, the terraced hillside and roomy, rambling house. Westin and his wife Ellisha have been here for two years; recently, the landscaping began to come together.

It is 9 o’clock on this Wednesday morning and, uncharacteristically, both Westins are home. Now in his fourth year as dean of Fine Arts at El Camino, Westin puts in the same kind of long hours as his counterparts.

“I can spend up to 12 hours a day on the computer,” he says, “We do all our business there. We analyze past box office, project future ticket sales, look at budgets--every one of our 212 events has its own, separate budget. All aspects of this business go through the computer.”

Westin emphasizes the business end of his operation because it is the foundation of the education end. And he does not grow defensive when he is accused of booking a large number of pop music, country music and non-classical events--actually, by his count, only 22 out of 211 events in 1988-89.

“Our pops series make it possible--they support and underwrite our classical orchestral series, which could never in a million years support itself unless we had a hall with 10,000 seats” (the budget for the orchestra series by itself is $165,000).

“That orchestral series, in turn, is the very backbone of our music teaching program at El Camino. We count on it to bring our music majors, and our other music students, in touch with live music. Without live music to attend and hear, they would be operating literally in the dark.”

Now on the subject of education, Westin--at present completing his doctoral dissertation at USC on subjects related to young people and their responses to music--can hardly stop.

“To make our concert presentations doubly effective, we began this year to ask all touring artists to undertake some kind of residency in connection with their performance here. So far, we’ve had nine residencies in the fall, with another nine to come in the spring.

“It can be as short and simple as a question-and-answer period. Or as long and time-consuming as master classes. Most of the artists have been quite cooperative. Nureyev chose 14 dancers for his master classes in January. Andre Watts got very excited at the prospect of giving a master class, and has asked for tapes and bios two months in advance in order to study them.”

Westin had an unexpected response in late September, when the St. Louis Symphony came through town. Leonard Slatkin spoke informally to a roomful of young conductors from El Camino, USC, and other local schools. Then Murry Sidlin, former music director of the Long Beach Symphony, that week guest conducting in San Diego, dropped in.

“The 60-minute session turned into a three-hour gabfest, and I had to break it up finally because it was time for the concert to start,” Westin says.

He expresses disdain when artists decline to include a residency with their performances. “We were offered a recital by (soprano) Kathleen Battle, next season. But I turned (the manager) down. Battle just didn’t want to do a residency.

“It’s my feeling that this is how the legacy is passed on. Artists teaching artists. And that’s one reason I have resolved to try even harder next year to get the word out when a residency is about to take place, so that any young person in the area who might be interested can find about it in advance.

The 48-year-old dean makes strict distinctions between “instructional money” and “non-instructional money,” though the public at large may have no interest in such distinctions.

“The fact is,” Westin says, “For more than 20 years, the public has been coming to El Camino because of the first-class type of programming that (former impresario) Robert Haag was putting on here. Also, I think a lot of our present faculty was drawn here for the same reason. We’ve got a reputation. What I’ve been able to add is some effective ways to utilize all our seating capacities.”

An Educational Group

Breakfasting in an elegant hotel dining room just a block from the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Erich Vollmer is the picture of success: tall, trim, serious of manner.

Vollmer runs the Orange County Philharmonic Society, which is not an orchestra but a presenter of concerts and an educational organization, bringing youth to concerts and vice versa.

The society is the largest single presenter of events at the Orange County Performing Arts Center; its total budget, including both professional concerts and youth events, is now $2.4 million annually, and the executive director says he expects no appreciable rise in the coming, 1989-90 season, the group’s fourth year in the Orange County Center.

Only half of that amount is actually spent on concert presentation. The organization, an outgrowth of a training orchestra founded in the 1950s, concentrates heavily on its educational projects. To do this, it enlists the volunteer efforts of about 1,600 women, working in 31 committees spread out over the county.

“The education aspect is staggering,” explains Vollmer, a USC graduate who had been an academic executive at his alma mater, then an official with Young Musicians Foundation, finally an opera administrator before returning, five years ago, to the county where he grew up.

“We take music to the kids and we bring them to the Center. We reach 300,000 students a year from second grade to high school. We give probably one program a day for every day school is in session. No, I do not attend every single program. But I know what happens at every one. And we are constantly upgrading, self-criticizing, looking for better ways. The toughest audience in the world is the kids, because if they’re bored, they won’t fake it.”

The keystone of the education program is the series of daytime orchestra concerts in Segerstrom Hall, now played by the Orange County Youth Orchestra, conducted by John Koshak.

“During the year, every single fifth grader in the county is brought to the center for these concerts. We pay for the concert, and the schools pay for the transportation,” Vollmer explains. “I say every single fifth grader, but, unfortunately, that’s not exactly true, because some of the schools can’t or won’t pay for the transportation.”

Claiming that “the untapped audience is the key,” Vollmer says his first priority after education of the young is broadening the horizons of adults. “At this point, we don’t present dance, films or recitals. The center itself has become a ballet presenter, but dance will be in our thinking, sooner or later. And recitals.

“Recitals are a very expensive proposition because we really have to train our audience to it. When we brought Lynn Harrell for a cello recital, we sold only 1,600 tickets--that’s very hard on us financially, though respectable for a recital at our hall. We want to have violinists and cellists, but we need a better response.

“And Leontyne Price drew only 1,700 paid admissions in our 3,000-seat house. By keeping four series, we may be able to retain some of the events that right now don’t do so well. But we have to depend also on our friends to spread the word.”

Vollmer notes that, of the three organizations represented in this story, only one--his--pays rent on its concert hall. “If you’re talking about a symphony orchestra, that can cost us an average of $10,000 a night, before we pay a penny of administrative costs and artists fees.

“We have survived, however, and continue to grow, if slowly. Our third season at the Center was the season attrition hit--suddenly our subscriptions were down. Now, as we look at 1989-90, the direction is again up.” What is his biggest frustration:

“Trying to educate an audience that is reluctant to try something new. In Orange County, a recital by a cellist is something new, so that’s where we concentrate our efforts. But, slowly, people seem to be catching on.”

COMPARING THE EMPIRES

Four performing arts venues. (1989-90 figures in parentheses)

Ambassador UCLA 1988-89 Budgets $4.45 million $6.5 million (4.45 million) (7.1 million) Number of Events 112 175 (100+) (200) Deficit $600,000 0 Box Office Percentage 79% 48% Subscriptions 13,269 4,500

OC Philharmonic South Bay Center 1988-89 Budgets $1.3 million $2.14 million (1.3 million) ($2 million) Number of Events 23 211 (24) (212) Deficit 0* 0* Box Office Percentage 57% 99% Subscriptions 2,300 2,709

* Projected