Last month, the San Antonio Philharmonic — the orchestra founded by musicians from the now-defunct San Antonio Symphony — named former city councilman Roberto Treviño as its first executive director.
Treviño served on the Philharmonic's board during its inaugural season. What's more, he chaired council's Arts and Culture Committee and served on the city-county task force that worked to stabilize the Symphony during its 2018 financial crisis.
While Treviño, an architect by profession, comes into the role with an understanding of both the arts and the dynamics of working with city and county government, he acknowledges that the fledgling organization faces tough challenges.
The Philharmonic — currently performing at First Baptist Church rather than the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts — is operating on a limited budget as it works to build financial support. What's more, it's yet to land funding from the City of San Antonio.
Current city rules require arts organizations to be in existence for three years before they can obtain such grants.
Treviño said he's looking to build support inside city government to alter that rule or make an exception for the Philharmonic.
We sat down with the executive director to talk about how he plans to address those issues while also building on the successes of the Philharmonic's first season as a musician-run organization.
Is it daunting to lead an organization whose predecessor weathered years of financial struggle?
Yes, without a doubt. ... You'd be a fool not to think those things. But maybe I'm just equally a fool to have the belief that we actually have what it takes, and that this is too important to not continue trying. Being an executive director for an organization like this is about the arts. And the Philharmonic should be the flagship arts organization of this community, [just as] the New York Philharmonic or the San Francisco Symphony are in their cities. These things are indicative of how cities cultivate the arts programs in their communities. When I was on the city council, this was a very important issue for me.
[A] good example of what I'm talking about is that a good friend of mine, Marisela Barrera —she's a local artist ... and does a lot of amazing things — approached me about the fact that other cities, and we're talking about Texas cities like Dallas, provided meaningful support to individual artists through individual artist grants. Why did the City of San Antonio not provide the same? Well, that's a great question. ... And out of that, and it wasn't easy — I'll tell you, there was really a lot of arm wrestling with the city — but we got it done.
Right now, you've got some money coming in from the county but nothing from the city. How sustainable is the current model if you can't get another significant stream of financial support?
Well, the short answer is we're not going to stay in the current model, because that is not sustainable. We're just not going to do it. ... We have a vision for success, and we have a better understanding for what's going to get us there. ... Right now, for the concerts, we have full houses. Now, you could say, "Well, if we sold out every seat in this space both Friday and Saturday night, that should be it, right?" Except that that's not the case. That's not how it works. This is our earned revenue. And that earned revenue — because we're trying to keep ticket prices very affordable — that really only makes up one-third of our budget.
The second third is the contributions, the foundations, the folks that are willing to help support us, which includes county and city dollars. Of course, that's what we want to continue having and building on. But what's missing [in that segment] is corporate support. One of my biggest priorities is to go talk to our local corporations, and we've got many of them here in San Antonio. They could pitch in. That's going to make a huge, huge difference.
What about creating an endowment, something the musicians advocated for during the labor dispute?
The last third is what's known as investment or endowment. We've never had it. ... Part of it has been that from [the San Antonio Symphony's inception], the orchestra members were almost the last to hear about everything. So the orchestra was not a stakeholder or a part of the major conversations when it came to planning. ...
But another piece of this is that we are not going to be the kind of organization that waits for somebody else to save us. We're going to create our own destiny. We are going to create revenue models that could fill that third. In other words, we are going to create opportunities that essentially are that investment for us. We believe we have some potential things coming. All I can say is stay tuned. I can't really talk about those just yet.
You mentioned that there's a financial cost of being at the Tobin Center. Is that ultimately where you'd like to see the Philharmonic playing?
It's certainly not off the table. That's an amazing hall. Again, for all intents and purposes, it was built for this orchestra, and we should play there. The bigger point is we've got to do things that are mutually beneficial. We can't force a square peg into a round hole.
Subscribe to SA Current newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter| Or sign up for our RSS Feed
