The Orchestra’s Subscribers: Fiercely Loyal, Financially Essential and Sometimes Fickle : MASTER CHORALE : The Old Guard’s Up After 34 Years

They are the backbone of arts organizations, providing up to 90% of the audiences and of the revenues. Most are fiercely loyal and willing to volunteer their support, such as subscriber Betty Rockwell has done for years at the Pasadena Symphony. But some are fickle, as the Master Chorale of Orange County is discovering as the novelty of its new home at the Performing Arts Center wears off. Even the mighty Los Angeles Philharmonic has a 25% annual subscriber turnover rate. At the Pacific Symphony in Orange County, the goal is to retain 75% to 80% of all subscribers, and at 65% renewals this year it will be a struggle. Why are subscribers so imporant? Single-ticket sales are “scary,” says Deborah Rutter of the L.A. Chamber Orchestra, “because you never know how you’re doing until the last minute.” As the 1989-90 music season begins, here are five portraits of these key people, the subscribers themselves.

You could say Gloria Duncan of Tustin is part of the old guard.

Longtime music lovers, she and her husband bought season tickets to the Master Chorale of Orange County 10 years ago because of fellow church choir singers who were also Master Chorale members.

“In getting to know them, we started subscribing,” Duncan said.

On the verge of its 34th season and one of the county’s oldest performing arts organizations, the Master Chorale drew many of its early enthusiasts this way, said chorale board chairman John H. Rhynerson, who sang with the ensemble from 1980 to 1988.

“I’m sure most of the audiences were comprised of family members and friends of the chorus,” Rhynerson said, at least before the chorale moved into the Orange County Performing Arts Center when the Center opened in 1986.

Duncan, who is “over 50” and doesn’t work, still enjoys the social side of going to the performances. She and her husband also hold season tickets to Opera Pacific and subscribed 15 years ago to Pacific Chorale, Orange County’s other major chorale, until time constraints forced them to cancel.

“We have friends we go to the chorale with,” she said, “and we always bump into somebody we know, whether we’re at the symphony or the opera or the chorale.”

Duncan, who donates $500 annually to the Master Chorale, spends up to $2,000 annually on concerts and recordings, and belongs to support groups for two other local music organizations.

Master Chorale of O.C., with which the William Hall Chorale of Pasadena was merged last April, doesn’t necessarily generate most of its revenues from subscription sales. Unlike some other arts organizations, single tickets can in fact account for the majority of a season’s sales. Also, more than half the organization’s budget, at $383,000 this year, comes from private donations and government grants, Rhynerson said.

However, loyal subscribers like Duncan are crucial to the 167-member chorale, especially since it has suffered a major decline in total ticket sales for the past two years, according to Rhynerson.

Like Pacific Symphony, the chorale enjoyed a boom year in 1986 with the center’s inauguration. Moving from community halls such as Santa Ana High School Auditorium to the much larger, $73-million Center, its subscription totals shot from 800 to 1,500, which, when combined with single-ticket sales, filled 88% of a possible 11,612 seats, Rhynerson said.

“People in the community wanted to buy (tickets to) anything just to go to the center,” Rhynerson said. “It was a fine season for us.”

However, though recent attendance figures are “above the national norm for a choral organization,” Rhynerson said, sales plummeted in the 1987-88 season, when only 1,150 subscriptions and 1,200 single tickets were sold to fill 75% of a possible 7,319 seats.

The novelty of the plush, new center had begun to wane, he said. And, with numerous presentations by both local and touring groups, “people became more selective about events they attended . . . they began making choices and choral music was not on the top of the list of many people. . . . “

In addition--and significantly--October 1987 marked the resignation, largely over artistic direction and control over the ensemble’s pops subgroup, the Californians, of music director Maurice Allard, who had led the chorale for nine years. Hall was soon engaged as interim director, but the changeover precipitated cancellation of two Center concerts and prompted a number of disgruntled Allard devotees to stay home, Rhynerson said.

Allard’s resignation may have been responsible for another attendance drop the following, critical year, Rhynerson said, in which William Hall took over for the first time as permanent music director. In 1988-89, 1,077 subscriptions and 500 single tickets were sold to fill only 69% of a possible 8,738 seats.

Rhynerson admits anxiety about the continued downward trend. “It is so competitive, there are so many outstanding arts organizations and as we enter our fourth year at the Center, people continue to be selective about the events they choose to attend.”