Another Fact of the Week

The salaries and benefits of just two staff members, the Executive Director and Music Director, are a whopping 12% of the SSO's new budget. Meanwhile, the entire cost of the orchestra - all of the players - is around 25%. In other words, in the new imposed contract, only 25 cents of every dollar donated to the SSO will go to the musicians of the orchestra. The rest will go into "administrative overhead."

Last Fact of the Week

Many people seem under the impression that the reason for the dramatic cut in the number of educational services this season was due to the excessive cost to the organization. The SSO administration, for example, scheduled no in-school performances from September through January.

What if they had scheduled these performances? Let's say they had scheduled 50 in-school ensembles in Caddo and Bossier schools. How much more would this have cost them? Ready for this?

NOT ONE SINGLE PENNY!

One of the advantages of having a full-time core is that educational performances can be scheduled without additional cost to the organization! So, the SSO administration wasted this wonderful resource during the 2007-08 season, performing just a fraction of the educational concerts they could have had, and have had, each year until now.

Previous fact of the Week

A recent magazine article stated that the SSO administration had hired 250 musicians over the course of the season. This is impossible, unless one counts the same players playing multiple concerts as if they were different players.

On the February 9th, 2008 Master Concert, for example, the SSO used 66 players. On the April 5th Master Concert the SSO used 60 players. There were 6 fewer musicians because of the smaller repertoire performed. Of the remaining musicians, 55 players were exactly the same performers, and the last handful were substitute players because of the unavailablity of certain out of town per-service musicians.

The full-time core typically makes up about 40% of the musicians performing on Master concerts and 55%-100% of the musicians used for most ballet, opera and educational performances.

Previous Fact of the Week

The new plan will cut $332,153 in operating costs, all at the expense of the full-time musicians. In a recent season, the cost of the core including FICA, pension and health payments was a total of $429,126. Under management's new plan, the cost of the same group of people would be $96,973. In other words, the cost to the orchestra of all 24 highly skilled and talented professionals combined would not be much higher than what the SSO currently pays the executive director (including FICA, etc.).