My Letter to the Tulsa World

Tulsa World
P.O. Box 1770
Tulsa, OK 74102-1770

Re: Include the Arts in National Economic Recovery Efforts

Dear Tulsa World:

As Congress considers the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the arts and culture sector must be included. The arts are essential to the health and vitality of our communities. They enhance community development; spur urban renewal; attract new businesses; draw tourism dollars; and create an environment that attracts skilled, educated workers and builds a robust 21st century workforce.

Nonprofit arts organizations such as the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra, Tulsa Ballet, Tulsa Opera, and Theatre Tulsa, to name but a few, are proud members of the business community—employing people locally, purchasing goods and services within the community, and involved in the marketing and promotion of their cities. In fact, there are more full-time jobs supported by the nonprofit arts than are in accounting, public safety officers, even lawyers and just slightly fewer than elementary school teachers.

According to Americans for the Arts, a $50 million investment to the National Endowment for the Arts will provide critical funding to save 14,422 jobs from being lost in the U.S. economy. This is based on the ability of the NEA to leverage $7 in additional support through local, state and private donations, for every $1 in NEA subsidies.

There are approximately 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations, which spend $63.1 billion annually. Without an economic stimulus for the nonprofit arts industry, experts expect about 10% of these organizations (ranging from large arts institutions like museums and orchestras to small community-based organizations in suburban, urban and rural areas) to shut their doors in 2009 - a loss of 260,000 jobs.

In a report released in mid-January, the National Governor's Association stated, "Arts and culture are important to state economies. Arts and culture-related industries, also known as "creative industries," provide direct economic benefits to states and communities: They create jobs, attract investments, generate tax revenues, and stimulate local economies through tourism and consumer purchases." A recent arts economic impact study in Tulsa showed that every person attending an arts performance generates 27.47 for our economy. If we conservatively estimate last night's performance of Cinderella at 2,100 attendees, than last night's performance alone brought $57,687 into Tulsa's economy.

Then-NEA Chairman Dana Gioia issued the following statement prior to his departure, "Arts organizations have been hit enormously hard by the current recession. They've seen their support drop from corporations, foundations, and municipalities. This infusion of funds will help sustain them, their staffs, and the artists they employ. We are hopeful that Congress and the new administration will support this important investment."

Sincerely,

Martha Mattes

Coming together

Tulsa Symphony creates near-perfect fit on opening night

JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer 11/6/2006 View in Print (PDF) Format

A bit of history happened Friday night at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center: The Tulsa Symphony performed its very first concert.

"The keystone of the arts in our city is being re-established in Tulsa tonight," said KOTV personality Glenda Silvey as the evening began.

More than four years have passed since the city's first fully professional orchestra, the Tulsa Philharmonic, dissolved into a stagnant puddle of bad debts and disastrous management after 54 years of operations.

It was 11 months ago, almost to the day, when Dr. Frank Letcher first proposed the idea of an entirely new and different orchestra to be called the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra -- a fully professional ensemble that would employ its musicians throughout the organization, not just as performers on the stage.

It is a tribute to the musicians' commitment to Tulsa that this concept was put into action so quickly, because so many former Philharmonic musicians continued to live and work in Tulsa after that orchestra's collapse in 2002.

In fact, Friday's concert was hardly the orchestra's debut. That came in February, when it accompanied Tulsa Ballet's production of "The Sleeping Beauty." The Tulsa Symphony has also performed with the Tulsa Oratorio Chorus, and many of its musicians were part of the orchestras used by Tulsa Opera and Light Opera Oklahoma this year.

Even so, Friday's concert, titled "Get to Know TSO," was the real benchmark for the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra -- the first performance it could truly call its own, its attempt to make good on the idea, as Silvey put it in her opening remarks, "that an orchestra is not a luxury but a necessity."

So -- how did they do?

Three words: pretty darn good.

It wasn't a perfect evening, to be sure. Jose-Luis Novo, the guest conductor for this concert, set a tempo for Mascagni's "Intermezzo" from "Cavalleria Rusticana" that struck us as too slow. Some soft high notes from the trumpets during the "Some where" segment of Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story" -- tough sounds to produce, we grant it -- were a little wobbly. And one over-eager fiddler hit one note too many at the end of the first movement of the Symphony No. 5 by Beethoven.

Yet, these moments were aberrations (or, in the case of the Mascagni, differences of taste). What made the evening special, on a musical rather than a his torical level, was that the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra lived up to its name on the most basic level.

The word "symphony" comes from a pair of Greek words that mean, respectively, "sound" and "together." That is what the Tulsa Symphony did -- for all the many people and instruments that make up the ensemble, the sound they made was one of complete togetherness, remarkable clarity and unwavering purpose.

That was evident from the first few moments of Shostakovich's "Festive Overture." Interestingly, the city's other orchestra, the Signature Symphony at Tulsa Community College, performed this same work the evening before.

Maybe the best way to describe the difference is this. Imagine a puzzle arranged so that all the pieces are in the proper place, just not fitted together. That would be the Signa ture Symphony's Thursday night performance. Imagine that same puzzle with all the pieces connected, and you have the Tulsa Symphony.

That might also be why Novo chose a slower-than-usual tempo for the Mascagni -- to show off that unity and cohesiveness, to stretch things out so that the orchestra could not simply coast along on the music's beautifully sad melodies.

The Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story" gave a number of the musicians a chance to show off a little -- in particular, principal violist Jeffery Cowen, principal flute John Rush, timpanist Gerald Scholl, percussionist Steven Craft and principal French horn J. Bruce Schultz.

And the Symphony No. 5 by Beethoven got an unusually joyous reading from the Tulsa Symphony. The sound of "fate knocking at the door," as Beethoven described the famous di-di-di-dah motif that runs throughout the piece was played here less as something to fear as a challenge to be met -- and overcome.

That, in a real sense, is what this "Get to Know the TSO" concert was all about. It has met the challenge of creating a new musical entity for the city of Tulsa, of taking its first steps on what it hopes to be a long and fruitful artistic journey.

The challenge now is to make certain that those present at the start of this journey -- the 1,000-plus season subscribers, the organizations that have contributed to getting the TSO to this point, the orchestra's musicians and staff -- will keep moving forward once the feel-good glow of this "opening night" has passed, to make certain that the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra "sounds together" for a long time to come.

James D. Watts Jr. (918) 581-8478