Orchestral manoeuvres in the dark

A leaked document is evidence that behind the scenes, Auckland Philharmonia is wracked with conflict.

Xian Zhang strides on stage and a sea of white hair and hearing aids enthusiastically applauds as the diminutive Chinese conductor shakes hands with the concert master, bows to the assembled and curtly turns her back on them. On this balmy summer evening the Auckland Town Hall audience is all anticipation, letting go an urgent fusillade of last-minute coughs as Zhang's baton lifts skyward. Silence, a pause, Zhang knifes the air with erupting force and the orchestra breathes as one, recreating Brahms' Tragic Overture masterpiece.

"In only a few seconds," writes Herald reviewer William Dart, "so many ideas are released - two vast chords, a searching string unison over murmuring timpani and a molto crescendo ... ".

Amidst such vitality, such harmony, where the music transcends its component parts, it's hard to fathom the Auckland Philharmonia is wracked with conflict. This is Auckland's orchestra - not the amply Government-funded New Zealand Symphony Orchestra - but the one formed 25 years ago out of the ashes of the Symphonia of Auckland.

It's an orchestra grown from a dedicated group of 33 underpaid musicians into a 68-strong world-class orchestra that's still underpaid. Its audiences are typically aged between 46 and 75 years old and 59 percent are female. But from Starlight Symphony to school workshops and the Baby Proms, the APO goes beyond its Town Hall base to take classical culture to broad audiences.

It sold around 60,000 tickets last year and provided an extraordinary range of concerts - from Mahler to Meatloaf. This weekend, its first contribution to the AK05 Festival is Bugs Bunny on Broadway, reinterpreted masterpieces from Wagner, Strauss and Tchaikowsky played against a backdrop of classic Warner Bros cartoons.

But in its silver anniversary year, the Auckland Philharmonia is still struggling to get the funding and recognition it deserves. As if that isn't enough of a challenge, it's also struggling with internal strife.

The conflict the orchestra is going through is not just what happens when a group of musicians, many of whom are couples, work so closely together - such as, say, when a violin married to a horn finds him in bed with a woodwind. Neither is it just artistic rivalry - like between the strings and the brass; intellect versus brawn. Nor is it simply the conflict that arises when there's a demanding music director and musicians feeling they're being picked on. Such drama is normal in any orchestra; part of the backdrop.

The drama here goes much deeper. Deep into "serious concerns about the Auckland Philharmonia's continued artistic and financial viability". At least that's the view of BoardWorks International consultant Graeme Nahkies who's been brought in by retired career diplomat Timothy Hannah to diagnose the orchestra's governance malaise. Hannah, himself brought in by the orchestra's board of directors last year as an "interim executive chairman", is trying to sort out a very tangled mess.

In a leaked confidential report Nahkies writes, "There is internal conflict verging on dysfunctionality.

"Terms that characterise the organisation include: conservative, ambivalent about quality, faction-ridden, reactive, uninterested in reality, suspicious, resistant to authority, self-indulgent (even self-serving), inward-looking, fearful." Phew.

It gets worse. "There is bitterness and acrimony. There are unresolved disputes. There is an 'all care, no responsibility' attitude - people who behave badly and excuse their lack of respect for the organisation and their colleagues because it reflects their 'passion'. There is widespread use of the language of blame and polarisation. There is a low level of trust and respect (between different players; between some players and management; between some players and the board; and perhaps even between board and management)."

The orchestra is also in dysfunctional financial straights - running into this year with another deficit. For the 2003 financial year it lost $341,393. And while the size of the 2004 loss hasn't yet been disclosed, it's clearly worrying Hannah. In December he wrote an email to musicians and management, saying, "On the key financial side and supporting the 2005 deficit, Creative New Zealand were understandably very negative. So we need to seriously go back to the drawing board on that."

Creative New Zealand which funds the orchestra to the tune of $1.5 million a year (compared with $10.1 million the NZSO got in 2003) is concerned about whether the organisation is complying with its funding contract - particularly in terms of meeting budget. Hannah notes the dysfunction too: "I do come close to being seriously discouraged at times by differences among players. I sometimes encounter suggestions of rumour, suspicion, vested interest, intimidation, resistance to change and other atmospheric downers." He declines, diplomatically, an interview with the Herald, saying, "I can't see that talking further is likely to help me to achieve my objectives."

There is a similar rebuff from Creative New Zealand. Chief executive Elizabeth Kerr cites contractual confidentiality. No comment. Is Creative New Zealand seeking changes to the orchestra? "If we were asking them to make changes, we would discuss it with them."

A day later Kerr whistles a different tune, sending a statement. Yes, the orchestra does need to change. "It is now time for a more contemporary and appropriate structure that allows the board to govern, the managers to manage and the players to play." And yes, Creative New Zealand did indeed commission an independent report by Graeme Nahkies and is "now supporting the Auckland Philharmonia executive to implement its recommendations".

According to Kerr the structure of the orchestra, set up as a co-operative society where the musicians had collective decision-making power, is inappropriate for what the Auckland Philharmonia has become - "a major arts organisation with a $7 million turnover, highly professional aspirations, wide community support, and a complex mix of private and public investors".

But not everyone sees it that way. "We're being forced to give up democracy for bureaucracy," said a musician, who didn't want to be named for fear of losing their job. In corporate business-speak the orchestra is going through "change management" - coming to terms with devolving power from the group to a smaller elected board and management. But in the way the changes have been bulldozed through, the orchestra has become a textbook example of mismanagement and how not to do it.

When the orchestra's concertmaster emeritus and secretary of the Auckland Philharmonia Society Brecon Carter answers the door of his Devonport villa, he's on the phone and fuming. Jungle drums have warned him that the Herald has more information than it should. Ushering me down the hall, Carter takes a firm grip of my elbow and lurches me into the lounge. "In here," he snaps. Not a good start, but at least I'm being thrown into the room rather than out.

I ask how he feels about the leaked document. "Disgusted", he says.

Couldn't it perhaps be a measure of the frustration felt by some society members at not getting their voice heard?

"It's not just honest frustration because if it's honest frustration you talk about it - you wouldn't go behind everybody's back and be a spy leaking stuff."

Carter says there are only a handful of dissidents. "Some people don't want to give up what they had before in the co-operative situation where they all had a say."

But late last year when music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya laid complaints against three musicians, more than a handful - 32 in fact - wrote to the board calling the complaints process used against one of the musicians "a cruel treatment of a respected senior member of the orchestra". The complaint remains unresolved and the subject of ongoing litigation.

Carter says the appointment of a music director and the instigation of a new complaints process was done to improve the artistic standards of the orchestra. Problems arose because new rules "hadn't been fleshed out" - something he says has been remedied with a more detailed set of rules.

The Nahkies report is critical: "The draft rules and regulations are highly prescriptive and detailed, even insulting, in their attempt to regulate the smallest detail of adult (?) behaviour. They seem a world away from what is the essence of a profession: self-regulation and self-responsibility. If such regulation is truly necessary (and I have seen nothing like it in 31 years of corporate life) then this is a very sick culture." It's a point not lost on the musicians - several of whom spokeon condition of anonymity. "Prior to this we had a perfectly good complaints procedure, and several people have lost their jobs or were moved aside, but we did it in a humane way," says one. "If somebody is going to be at the top and going to be an autocratic prick ruling with an iron fist it's not going to work, not in the New Zealand culture," says another.

Speaking from Baltimore, Harth-Bedoya says he was simply following the process set down and that if a complaint gets validated, then it's something to be worked on. "One of the musicians understood the issues, took it on himself to work on it and it was solved - that's the intention of any artistic issue, that it gets solved."

Why then the outcry? "I've been a music director of four orchestras, so I'm younger than most of them, but I have more experience at doing my job than they have as music directors. Certainly personalities always play in the equation - I don't get offended when a musician in the orchestra tells me they cannot understand my beat here and there - I go home and think about it and try to correct it because they can be right and my job is to fix it for them."

Ann Rodda stands tall and blonde for the photo, the massive double bass cases encircling her like battlements. The Arizona-born general manager of the orchestra is under attack on a few fronts. There is the messy departure of the artistic administrator Richard Wenn, sacked in December for serious misconduct - a charge he rejects and is fighting. Unless resolved, the case could be damaging because of the so-called Wenn Diaries - apparently seen by a number of the musicians and providing a detailed account of two years under Rodda's rule. Then there's the artistic-complaints process which Rodda backs. "When Miguel [Harth-Bedoya] raised his concerns about a couple of players, those players were not thrilled," she says. But it was necessary. "It was the first time there was a formal process put in place that empowered a music director and related instrumentalists to say, 'Yep we've got a problem here and we need to do something about it'."

Rodda argues that improving artistic excellence is crucial to the future of the orchestra and must be worked through. "One of the advantages that we've got here compared to say North American orchestras is that they're heavily unionised. We're not, and that is a really good benefit for us because then it's the parties themselves that are in discussion - without a union creating a further wedge."

Some musicians beg to disagree - when they formed they were a union, a collective in the purest sense. Many believe they they should be treated as employees of the society they formed out of the sweat of their brows. But a recent Employment Relations Authority ruling found technically they were independent contractors - and therefore not entitled to all the rights and protections of employees.

Armed with a Simpson Grierson legal opinion that says the opposite, some musicians are gearing up for a fight. They are worried that their already meagre salaries will be eroded further by new individual contracts. The Simpson Grierson opinion also points out that members of the society do, if they have the numbers, retain the ultimate control through the appointment of board members sympathetic to their wishes at annual general meetings.

Nahkies sees the problem as one where ownership and membership of the society have got confused with tenured employment. "It is difficult for the society to exercise its stewardship obligations (to act in the best interests of the Philharmonia as a whole) when some members of the Society demand it act as a 'trade union' to extend the tenure (and terms) of their individual employment in a way that may compromise the whole organisation."

One thing everyone does agree on is that musicians are very poorly paid. Rank and file players get around $35,000 a year and have had no pay rises for at least eight years. "It is fraudulent I suppose for us or anyone to expect our players and staff to keep doing what they're doing when they're really the ones who are subsidising the orchestra," says Rodda. Fine "change management" words, but the reality, according to Nahkies, is likely to be two classes of contracted players - the core of the orchestra "contracted on a permanent (and more generous basis)" and the balance "on a lesser retainers to secure their availability as required". Cheap and expensive seats.

Gregory Shanahan dismisses the Herald photographer saying he's changed his mind and doesn't want to be photographed. The immaculate lawyer says he's but a humble servant and if there are to be photos they should be of the important people, the musicians.

As chairman of the board of the Philharmonia society, Shanahan has occupied the hot seat of guiding the orchestra through a turbulent period - bringing in a new constitution and governance structure in 2003.

It's a seat he'll vacate at the next election of board members in May, a time to "allow fresh people to come in and pick up the reins".

The Nahkies report has a somewhat different take. "The present board has had a very difficult experience not entirely of its own making. Nevertheless its ability to recover the moral high ground for effective leadership would seem slight. Changes in membership (particularly the chairman and independent directors) would seem unavoidable."

Shanahan was instrumental in the rebirth of the fund-raising arm of the orchestra, the Philharmonia Foundation - aiming to create a $10 million fund that would generate a sufficient income stream to give the orchestra independent financial stability. So far it's raised about $1 million - not enough to provide a revenue stream to the orchestra, but sufficient to act as a guarantor for loans, to underwrite some activities and keep the orchestra solvent.

Detractors say the foundation now controls the orchestra's key assets such as its buildings and musical instruments - giving it a total worth including bequests of about $3.5 million. And that it's unfairly using its financial clout to bully the society into changes it doesn't necessarily want to make.

Shanahan argues the governance and constitutional changes are necessary to secure the funding the orchestra badly needs. Sponsors want accountability and conditions on the money they give. "The revised structure will be one which has the approval of Creative New Zealand, Auckland City and the foundation in terms of: 'You do those things and you'll have our financial support and we'll do our best to get the extra money you're looking for."

There are signs that some of the change-resistant musicians are facing up to the inevitable - albeit begrudgingly. Says one, "According to the powers that be, because we've changed our structure and given our power away we should be OK. We're going to have more finances and more remuneration, so if they say so, let's see if they can do it."

When Rodda looks a year ahead she sees "an organisation that is attractive to its audience, to funders, to sponsors, to donors, to the wider community". One which has "brand recognition even higher to be a sustainable orchestra of excellence for the region". Tellingly she doesn't mention the workers - the musicians. As one put it: "For me it almost feels as though the orchestra has been stolen."

Will the Auckland Philharmonia survive its current strife? Undoubtedly. Not because of the board or the management or the sponsors, but because of the music. All agree that in rehearsal or on stage, when the music plays troubles fall away.

As Harth-Bedoya puts it: "When it comes to the music-making it's amazing because the music makes everything go away because - and what I'm seeing is still a hopeful situation."