Reader Response: Empowerment Issues

“As someone who has been in an orchestra with a different structure than “normal” for 14 years, I think that most of what you have to say is valid. Most orchestra members, even in a “co-op” orchestra, do not want to be on time-consuming committees, and we have learned that it is much better to have a few good administrators than many ill-trained musicians attempting to get the same job done. It has been extremely difficult to find a conductor willing to have less power than most places give, and I’m sure the same would be true with other positions. We have nine musicians on the Board, and one of the nine is always in [an executive seat], like vice-president. Our position on issues gets heard, and although the financial info doesn’t always get disseminated to the entire orchestra, enough musicians are on the finance committee to make an impact.
We have learned that if we truly try to run ourselves it’s extremely hard to get grants and donations sufficient to have a decent salary. Being an organization that is in the public eye, we don’t want to get to the point where a no confidence vote is even an issue. That’s why having sufficient representation on the Board is so important. In the old Denver Symphony days, we had two orchestra members on the Board, but their positions ended up being more as observers than participants. Aside from financial contributions, our orchestra members who serve on the Board are expected to participate and be on committees, especially the Artistic Committee, which does the programming and soloist/guest conductor decision making, along with the conductor and artistic administrator, as well as many personnel issues.”