Why the show may, in fact, go on -
Globe and Mail
August 9, 2008
CANON FIRE: RADIO WARS
Why the show may, in fact, go on
In the last of a three-part series, critic Robert-Everett Green talks to
the
Montreal venture capitalist determined to save the CBC Radio Orchestra -
and
explains why it may not be the only CBC venture to survive a death
foretold
By Robert Everett-Green
The drama’s end seems to be in sight, and the chorus has gathered for the
tragic finale. But while classical-music fans lament the CBC’s decision to
disband the CBC Radio Orchestra, Alain Trudel, the orchestra’s principal
conductor, is quietly preparing for the next act.
In theory, the CBCRO will be finished after its final scheduled concert in
November. But Trudel is already discussing a future for the orchestra with
a
Montreal businessman who is calling for a national effort to find a new
way of
financing the Vancouver-based ensemble.
Philippe Labelle is a 39-year-old venture capitalist and founding CEO of
ZeFridge, an online software platform. He was shocked to hear about the
CBC’s
decision, while returning home from a family ski trip, and decided to work
on
a creative response.
“Even though I’m in Quebec, this orchestra is part of our national
heritage,”
Labelle said in a phone interview. “I’ve already talked with business
people
around the country. The idea is at least to provide the orchestra with the
funds to keep going for an interim period.” The longer-term goal, he said,
would be to reconstitute the orchestra as “some kind of a joint venture
with
the CBC, or a total spinoff” that would be sup****ted by private and public
funds. “We don’t want to confront the CBC,” he says. “They have pretty
strong
management, they’re in a changing environment, and they have made their
decision. But that doesn’t mean the orchestra has to stop living.”
Labelle and Trudel aren’t yet ready to make a proposal to the CBC. But
they
speak in perfect unison about the CBCRO’s distinctive role (or “mission,”
as
they prefer to say) as a broadcast showcase for emerging talent in
Canadian
classical music. “It’s a national platform for Canadian talent and
Canadian
art,” Trudel says, referring to the relatively high pro****tion of young
Canadian soloists, and new Canadian compositions, on the orchestra’s
programs.
The current crisis may actually bring that mission into sharper focus, he
says, as the key reason for keeping the orchestra alive.
“This may be the time for us to think about how a real 21st-century
orchestra
should develop,” he says. “To quote Barack Obama, we are and have been an
agent of change.”
The CBCRO was founded in 1938, one year after NBC created a radio
orchestra
for Arturo Toscanini. It’s now a chamber orchestra of about 40 regular
players, and is the last surviving radio orchestra in North America.
During most of its seven decades, the orchestra was a true broadcast
ensemble
that worked mainly in CBC studios. Most recent performances have been
public,
including a five-concert series at the Chan Centre in Vancouver.
The CBCRO has commissioned hundreds of new Canadian classical works, and
began
to reflect Radio 2’s inclusion of more popular material well before the
recent
wave of programming changes was announced. During the past two seasons,
its
Great Canadian Songbook project brought prominent Canadian pop singers
together with composers such as Glenn Buhr and Phil Dwyer, who arranged
classic Canadian songs by Leonard Cohen and others, for performance with
orchestra.
“We were happy with what they were doing,” says Mark Steinmetz, the head
of
CBC Radio music. “It was a very difficult decision [to end the CBCRO]. I
hired
Alain Trudel. I know what he is capable of.” But the CBC concluded that
the
money spent sustaining the orchestra (which manager Denise Ball estimates
at
around $600,000 a year) would go further when used to record performers
and
orchestras that don’t require the CBC to cover all their costs.
Making up for the CBC’s contribution is just part of what’s required if
the
CBCRO is to continue. The orchestra lacks many of the structural sup****ts
that
other orchestras take for granted, such as a board of directors, a staff
capable of raising funds and promoting the orchestra, and an organized
cadre
of volunteers. They would also have to forge links with government-funding
agencies.
“You’d really have to start an infrastructure from the ground up,” says
David
Brown, the orchestra’s principal double bassist, “but there’s probably a
lot
of people who might be willing to join in if someone were willing to
spearhead
it.”
Labelle could be that person, though he would have to be a quick study.
He’s a
life-long fan of classical music, and has served on the board of a shelter
in
Montreal, but has never been involved in running a symphony orchestra.
That
might not be a problem, especially if his entrepreneurial instincts
uncover
innovative ways of financing the orchestra. He told me he sees no reason
why
the CBCRO couldn’t extend its base of operations across the border into
the
northwest United States, or why part of the orchestra’s earned revenue
couldn’t come from creative exploitation of its many existing recordings.
There may also be something instructive in the example of the Manitoba
Chamber
Orchestra, another group that has a strong recent record with Canadian
music
(14 pieces last year, including three commissions) and young artists, and
a
close relation****p with the CBC. General manager Vicki Young says the
MCO’s
nine-concert series played to a 90-per-cent-capacity audience last year,
in a
city that (like Vancouver) also sup****ts a full-size orchestra. The MCO is
also developing a national presence, through the CBC and through recent
travels to Ontario and B.C. But the MCO’s core is only about half the size
of
the Radio Orchestra’s, while its current annual budget is about $800,000.
Another party that could have a role in the orchestra’s future is the City
of
Surrey, B.C., whose council voted in April to consider the idea of
installing
the CBCRO as the civic orchestra for the Vancouver-area municipality of
500,000. But in an interview, councillor Linda Hepner, who proposed the
move,
seemed uncertain as to whether the orchestra’s existing mission might
continue
there, and said that no further action would be taken till it’s clear that
the
CBC will not change its mind.
The CBCRO isn’t the only CBC venture that could survive even after its end
had
been foretold. CBC Records is still putting out classical CDs, the
Competition
for Young Composers is poised for a comeback, and a new series of
broadcasts
could make up for the suspension of the Competition for Young Performers.
Radio 2 announced last year that it had no plans to continue producing
CD-quality classical recordings for the cor****ation’s in-house recording
company. But general manager Randy Barnard says he is continuing to
develop
box sets and anthologies from the company catalogue of 400 master
recordings.
Most are budget-oriented sets by well-known performers. Two new boxes of
Glenn
Gould recordings sold 12,000 units for CBC Records last year, in a market
niche (Canadian classical recordings) in which 2,000 to 3,000 copies is
considered good. Three-quarters of those sales were made outside of
Canada,
through CBC Records’s distribution deals with Naxos and iTunes. Barnard
said a
Tafelmusik box set is on the agenda for October.
“The business of doing new classical-recording projects is on hold for the
moment,” he says, sounding hopeful that individual projects could be
negotiated with the network in the future. CBC Records will do three
pop-oriented projects this year, in co-operation with Radio-Canada’s
Espace
Musique.
Barnard probably has time to wait for the winds to change in the company’s
favour. CBC Records had revenues of $800,000 last year, including a rising
pro****tion from online sales, and has been in the black for the past 10
years.
There could also be a bright future for CBC Records within a joint online
platform. Barnard would like to see a consolidated site (MyCBC.ca,
perhaps)
that would deliver Radio 2’s podcasts and concerts-on-demand with
streaming
content from CBC Records and possibly other labels under licence. That
would
seem to mesh with Steinmetz’s belief that an increasing number of
listeners
want to be able to hear and buy music from the CBC online. In June, there
were
1,382,100 page views of Radio 2’s website.
The website will be a major venue for the successor to the
young-composers’
competition, which was last held in 2002. Steinmetz says the revived
contest,
which is to be launched formally in September, would put new emphasis on
the
activity of composition, not just its results.
“I think the compositional process is really mysterious to most
Canadians,” he
says. After consultations with composers, including Montreal’s Tim Brady,
a
plan was made for a three-week competition in which the creation of the
finalists’ 15- or 20-minute contest piece would be tracked on the radio
and
through a video blog.
The tentative title is Project Under Construction, which might not be a
bad
name for much of Radio 2 these days. The five finalists, all under 35,
would
be selected by a preliminary jury on the basis of past work, and for their
verbal communication skills, as demonstrated in a “five-minute personal
video
introduction.” All or part of the three-week final sequence would be
carried
out at the Banff Centre, and would also involve Espace Musique.
“It’s going to be one of the major priorities of Radio 2 next year,” says
Steinmetz, who says the composition of the final jury would also be
different
than in the past, and that listeners would have a choice to vote on a
people’s
choice award. “I want the jury to be more varied, not just the deans of
Canadian composition.”
It’s not clear that three weeks in a fish bowl is going to be conducive to
writing a first-class piece. But high-pressure deadlines have sometimes
resulted in good work: Rossini wrote all of The Barber of Seville in under
three weeks, though he wasn’t expected to talk about it in public while
writing.
Radio 2 is also considering a less dramatic way of fulfilling the function
of
its young-performers’ competition, which in the past helped the careers of
musicians such as tenor Ben Heppner and pianist Angela Hewitt. Steinmetz
says
the competition was expensive to run, produced only a few evenings of
radio,
and had been eclipsed to some extent by similar contests in Canada.
“We weren’t making a lot of impact,” he says. “And some of the bigger
performers weren’t coming to us, because other competitions were offering
bigger prizes.” Measha Brueggergosman, for instance, skipped the CBC
contest
(top prize: $10,000) in 2002 in favour of the new Jeunesses Musicales
Montreal
International Competition, where she won a total of $45,000.
Steinmetz says part of the function of the competition would be taken over
in
non-competitive weekly broadcasts that would feature a different young
performer each time, and would also include a profile of the artist. The
recordings would be broadcast on Sunday Afternoon in Concert, and probably
repeated at least in part on the weekday-afternoon classical program that
is
still in development. Decisions about the form and destination of the
young-performer segments will be made in the fall, he says, with a
projected
date for the first productions some time in the early New Year.
In short, much that seemed to be falling out of CBC Radio seems to be
returning in new ways. As they say in the broadcast business, stay tuned.
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