Very interesting thread. I cannot be impartial here, being a professional orchestral musician, however I also want to maintain relative anonymity here so I can feel more free to post on these kinds of topics, so I will not go into specifics too much, and not about my own orchestra at all. I will comment on a couple of things that have been posted so far, though.
Rok2kid wrote "Stop all the rehersals for EVERY concert. This saves money." Leaving aside the strange implication following about artistic quality not being important (??!!), professional orchestras do not rehearse very much. For a typical classical subscription concert, most orchestras will have about four, at most five rehearsals, all in the same week as the three or four performances (this is assuming a large orchestra such as those actually named so far in the thread). For a typical pops concert, there will usually be only one, or at most two rehearsals. For a program which is repeated throughout the season, such as a kiddie show, there will usually be only one rehearsal at the beginning of the season. For orchestras that still play the Nutcracker every Christmas season (very few ballet companies use live orchestras anymore - they are in much worse shape than we), there would only be one rehearsal.
Brownsfan is basically correct about how funding works. Ticket sales for many orchestras only account for about 25% of their budget (this is an average of all orchestras, not just the big ones). All orchestras are non-profit organizations that must raise their budget all over again each and every season. One thing I will say is that corporate funding is nowhere near as large as you guys seem to think, and a great many large corporations have stopped giving much at all. A great many orchestras in this country are kept afloat by just one or two extremely wealthy individual patrons.
IMO, many orchestras spend far too much time trying to chase corporations and/or extremely wealthy individuals for huge donations, and nowhere near enough time focusing on the middle class, which would of course include most of their actual audience in attendance at the concerts. For instance, if an orchestra in a large metropolitan area could get at least 3000 people to give just $100 in a year, that's $300,000 right there. But too many orchestras only go after individuals who might be able to write one check for that three hundred grand.
There are a great many orchestras having this conversation right now, trying to stay viable. I will be passing along some of the comments here to some of my colleagues, both the positive and negative. Many orchestras certainly need to change their marketing strategies, that's for sure. Mine is no exception. I hope more people will contribute to this thread.
And by the way, Onhwy61, I'll be giving some thought to the idea that about 7 of the top 20 orchestras in the world right now would be American. My first instinct would be to say that that is probably about right, possibly one or two more, but of course this is a very subjective question.
