SF Symphony Leadership Addresses Financial Issues After Musicians’ Protest

The leadership of the San Francisco Symphony has attempted to offer more transparency into its financial challenges after Esa-Pekka Salonen’s decision to step down as music director. Over the past two weeks, orchestra musicians have protested both Salonen’s impending departure and the Symphony’s cuts to programs.

In a four-page statement issued Monday, the Symphony said that it “deeply values” the musicians of the orchestra, as well as its relationship with Salonen, who on March 14 said he was stepping down from the Symphony “because I do not share the same goals for the future of the institution as the Board of Governors.”

Those goals are widely understood to be about Salonen’s creative vision for the Symphony, which includes international tours, special concerts, commissions and community programs, which the Symphony has either canceled or postponed. (As Salonen explained to the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, “The board has decided on big and dramatic cuts that affect the orchestra’s artistic profile so deeply that I don’t consider it possible to continue my contract.”)

“We would love nothing more than to be able to immediately restore the number of SoundBox performances, semi-staged productions, and new commissions; to resume touring; and to reinstate Concerts for Kids,” the Symphony’s statement reads. “The limiting factor prohibiting us from doing so is not a lack of desire, drive, or ambition. It is solely a lack of immediate financial resources.”

The unsigned statement goes into additional detail about the Symphony’s declarations that its expenses exceed its revenue, asserting that in 2022–23, “the Symphony’s operating expenses totaled $78.6 million, while operating revenues, exclusive of extraordinary one-time contributions, totaled just $67.4 million.”

Without taking action or receiving additional funding, “we anticipate that our cumulative cash losses could grow by an additional $80 million over the next five years,” the statement reads.

Andy Lynch, a spokesperson for the musicians, said the orchestra is still disappointed.

“While we are glad that the administration is responding to the overwhelming outpouring of concern regarding the departure of Esa-Pekka Salonen due to cuts to programming, education, and touring, there is still no plan nor timeline for the reinstatement of these supposedly temporary cuts. The administration claims they are committed to transparency and ensuring the Symphony remains a world-class organization, but their recent actions have driven away a world-class Music Director and left more questions than answers related to Symphony finances and endowment,” Lynch said in a statement.

“Despite our requests, the administration has still not provided us with audited financial statements to support their claims, which we are now only hearing about through a press release.”

Orchestra musicians have argued that the symphony should draw on its $325 million endowment — the second-largest of the country’s symphony orchestras — to keep programs afloat and, by extension, retain Salonen on the podium.

On this, the Symphony claims its hands are tied.

“There is a common misconception that endowments can be accessed like a savings account and used to support operating expenses at any time. In reality, our flexibility in spending from the endowment is limited by California law, as well as by legally binding donor applied restrictions,” the statement reads. (Restrictions on a nonprofit’s endowment can also be self-applied by the board.)

Draws from the endowment provide an annual source of revenue for the organization. Musicians had provided figures to KQED showing a 4.4% draw on the endowment in 2022. The Symphony’s statement says the board has now authorized a larger draw of 6.45% for the 2024–25 season.

Another sticking point for the musicians has been their salaries, which have not been restored to pre-pandemic levels like those of their counterparts in other orchestras. (According to a flyer distributed by musicians to patrons at Davies Symphony Hall on March 16, Salonen has personally argued for musicians’ pay to be restored.) The Symphony statement, however, did not mention nor address musicians’ pay.

Meanwhile, a Change.org petition addressed to the Symphony board, calling to retain Salonen and reinvest in Symphony programs, has received over 5,000 signatures.