ISSUE 107
NEWSLETTER
SEPTEMBER 2020
@home
WITH COLDWELL BANKER TOMLINSON
looking outside the box
The Spokane Symphony has been forced to slash budgets and furlough staff, but they're aiming to emerge stronger in the end Excerpted from an article by EJ Ianelli
J
eff vom Saal has turned his basement into an underground command center. Now outfitted with a massive whiteboard full of brainstorming ideas, a repurposed filing cabinet and a printer he sourced on the cheap from Facebook Marketplace, the space has become the unofficial strategic headquarters for the Spokane Symphony and the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox in the age of social distancing. As executive director of the symphony and the venue it calls home, vom Saal, like executive directors everywhere, has been engaged in nonstop damage control since COVID-19 restrictions first went into effect in mid-March. By now, it's an all-too-common story among performing arts organizations. At first, there was the hope that the initial limits on social gatherings were all just temporary. A few postponements and a little belt-tightening would suffice. It wasn't the venue going dark so much as briefly dimming the lights. But circumstances kept evolving. And with every change in infection counts and public health guidance, vom Saal and his staff have had to respond in kind. That ultimately led to the symphony's decision to create the only certainty they could. In late July, the entire 2020-21 season — its 75th anniversary, no less — was moved to next year. "There have been some fits and starts where we thought that the late fall could be a time for activity, and then that sort of got pushed into the early spring. It's hard to capture just what's around the next corner. All of us have had to not just readjust but really recalibrate and reimagine," he says, and that applies to the symphony and the theater alike.
says. "Up until coronavirus hit, I was always very proud to say that we've really grown both the range and the number of concerts, shows and events that we would present at the Fox every year." Vom Saal estimates that those events numbered over 100 annually. Now they're all on hold, which likewise means that box office attendants, stage crew and front-of-house managers — roughly 150 for any given payroll cycle — are all currently on "standby" along with the symphony's musicians. All that's left is a "barebones skeleton staff of a few people working a very few hours per week." The organization did secure a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan for $720,000 that will help pay the remaining staff through December. To help ease the budgetary strain a little further, both vom Saal and music director James Lowe forgave their salaries for three months. In July, their pay resumed at a "significantly reduced" rate. Their forgiven salaries are partly being used to pay for 100 percent of the musicians' health insurance as opposed to the usual half. The audience has played its part, too. Requests for season ticket refunds have been "pretty close to zero." The Symphony Association also set up a musicians' relief fund that has taken in roughly $110,000 in community donations, with $15,000 of that awarded to musicians so far. "We need authentic optimism, not blind optimism — really looking for the things we can control and that we can imagine together for the future," says vom Saal. "And there will be a day when we look back on this in the rearview mirror. There will be a point when we are extremely busy again."
"The organizational impact has been substantial," vom Saal Reprinted with permission by The Inlander