Opus One:
A Case Study of Innovative Organization in the Memphis Symphony Orchestra
Barry Gilmore
Part One: The Background and Development of Opus One
In May 2009, the concertmaster of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Susanna Perry Gilmore,
had just finished lunch with another musician when she was struck by an idea. Throughout the meal,
Gilmore and her colleague had discussed the dire financial straits in which the MSO found itself at the
end of the season, the recent announcement of a major reduction in staff, and a plan to reduce the
number of concerts for the next season. The idea was, in one sense, fledgling and undeveloped, but in
another it encompassed a broad vision from its first moments. Gilmore conceived of a new series for
the symphony with a new set of parameters—a series of unconducted performances of great works of
art which would take place in the round, with the audience surrounding and close to the musicians, and
which would occur in unusual venues around the city. Moreover, the series would be run entirely by
musicians, from design to marketing to production, and would be targeted at a new crowd of concertgoers, the twenty to forty year-old demographic that orchestras have trouble attracting. And, finally,
the concerts would include not just great symphonic works but also reception-like second halves in
which various musicians would showcase their other talents with performances of big band music,
bluegrass, or experimental string ensemble arrangements. Gilmore’s idea even came with a ready title:
Opus One.
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Gilmore attributes her brainchild partly to the immediate necessity to fill in gaps in the
performance schedule and partly to a larger environmental issue affecting the organization:
We certainly weren’t in a position to expect the staff to go out and hustle more work, when they
were already overwhelmed…it was a moment of, well, here’s how we can solve all of these
problems and not expect the staff to do more, to figure out how to do it ourselves. And all
wrapped up in that was, “How do we change? How do we change our image in the
community?”
It took little time for the idea to spread; within two weeks, it had been presented to several musicians,
board members, and staff, and many of those were on board and excited. Within a month, initial
funding had been secured and it looked certain that the initial Opus One concerts would take place the
following year.
What took longer to settle was the fallout of an idea that meant a radical shift for the
organization at several levels. The relationship of the musicians to one another, to the staff, to the
public, and even to the music were all subject to challenge and alteration as Opus One sped forward. In
the end, an idea which to Gilmore had seemed relatively simple, if unorthodox, turned out to threaten a
fundamental reshaping for the Memphis Symphony.
The Organizational Context
1. Changes in the Overall Environment
The MSO’s fifty-seven year history has been marked by relatively little change. In that time, only
three conductors and three concertmasters—an average tenure of nineteen years for each position—
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have served the orchestra (Gilmore, the third concertmaster, has been with the symphony for thirteen
years). Since 1983, the orchestra has employed a full-time core of over thirty musicians and a perservice cohort of another thirty-five or so musicians, with nearly twenty staff members supporting the
artists.
Yet in 2003, when Ryan Fleur became the orchestra’s president and CEO, constituents of all
types had begun to worry seriously about the orchestra’s future. Specific circumstances were partly to
blame. The symphony performed without a permanent hall for over six years while the city constructed
a new performing arts center, and at the end of that time the audience base had dwindled, revenues
had dropped significantly, and the community perception was largely of an outdated and irrelevant
organization. Worse still, in a city with a history of deep racial tension, the MSO relied on a traditional
audience made up of white, educated, wealthy, and elderly patrons, and that population, particularly as
a concert-going group, was shrinking. In that sense, the MSO found itself in the same position as many
arts organizations around the country; a National Endowment for the Arts 2008 survey, for instance,
determined that classical music concert attendance declined by 29% from 1982 to 2008, with the
steepest drop (20%) coming in the last six years (p. 3). During the same period of time, the average age
of concert-goers went up by nine years (to 49 years old) and the number of 18-24 year-olds attending
classical concerts dropped by 37%.
Ryan Fleur sees this shrinking audience as a driving force behind innovation in symphony
programming:
What this really is is a creative solution to something that, as we all know, is industry-wide. The
institution of orchestras as they’ve been built has been built around three things: making great
music, selling tickets, and raising money. I call this the Philadelphia Orchestra 1975 model. We
did a really good job of this for a while; it was a very narrow slice of the population that came to
concerts. Now you still serve that population plus a bunch of others…so we have to connect in a
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different way. The product has to be different. Part of what we do has to be what we’ve always
done, but there has to be a menu of other things that helps to create a new business model.
Opus One was not the first innovation brought about by a new take on the larger environment. Under
Fleur’s oversight and with participation from musicians, the symphony also initiated a collaborative
relationship with the Soulsville Charter School and a partnership with a Fortune-100 company that
resulted in a portable leadership seminar titled Leading from Every Chair. In each of these cases, a small
group of musicians was integral to planning and product, though staff continued to fill most traditional
support roles.
2. Recent Shifts: The 2008-2009 Crisis
The MSO performs for thirty-nine weeks each year (in June, July, and August, all musicians
except for the concertmaster are effectively laid off; many file for unemployment during this period).
The 2008-2009 season was the last for Music Director/conductor David Loebel, who joined the MSO in
1998; the initial stages of a conductor search, which would see an actual hire for the position until the
2010-2011 season, had begun. In the fall of 2008, as a short list of candidates formed, Ryan Fleur called
together a few key musicians, including the concertmaster, and informed them of another crisis. In the
economic downturn facing the entire nation, the MSO’s endowment had lost over 50% of its worth, a
cut of almost three million dollars.
The ramifications of such a loss startled the musicians. Real questions about the ability of the
organization to survive at all had to be addressed, and at the very least it seemed certain that the next
season, a pivotal one in which a short list of Music Director candidates would be flown to Memphis for
performance-based tryouts, would see a reduction in staff, salaries, actual performances, and possibly
even musical personnel. Fleur discussed with the musicians the likelihood that whole weeks of the
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season would remain empty; as he later said, “The reality is that sometimes it’s just cheaper not to play
at all.” For core musicians this would mean sitting idle, while for per-service musicians it could mean a
significant loss of income.
By the end of the season, all of the musicians knew the financial situation. The support staff was
reduced from 18 to 12, several weeks of the next season remained unscheduled, and the end result of a
difficult contract negotiation had resulted in a 5% pay cut for most musicians. Morale plummeted.
At the same time, there were glimmers of vitality in the organization. Leading From Every Chair
and the Soulsville Charter School affiliation showed real signs of success, largely thanks to the
investment of time and energy from musicians. In light of these developments, management and the
musicians (along with union representation) agreed to a new type of contract, one which included a
“capacity-building” clause in which musicians could be paid for non-musical services at the same rate
they were paid for rehearsals and concerts. This opt-in portion of the master agreement meant that
core musicians could choose from a variety of projects and could be compensated for their work in
those areas.
Another sign of strength soon came to light: none of the conductor candidates on the short list
(three official candidates and one unofficial candidate were booked to lead concerts the next year) had
withdrawn or balked significantly, possibly because the MSO was not the only major symphony
undergoing a financial crisis in the wake of the economic downturn of recent months.
3. Mission and Revenue: A Changing Landscape for Symphonies
Ryan Fleur admits that during the time he has been in Memphis, there has been an active effort
to change the mission—and the sense of mission—in the MSO. Shortly after Fleur’s arrival in 2003, a
think tank including musicians, board members, and staff created a new mission statement, at the heart
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of which was the goal “to make meaningful experiences through music.” The mission is meant to
encompass more than the traditional performer-audience relationship of the concert hall and to expand
the roles musicians play in the community.
For Fleur, such a change mission is not just for show; it marks a strategic response to the
changing landscape in which arts organizations operate. Fleur describes the change in priorities for
symphonies in this way:
Arts organizations tend to be inwardly focused, a little narcissistic. They say it’s all about making
great music. Well, if it’s all about great music, people can go somewhere else. What is it that’s
important to Memphis? The idea of patron engagement is to be externally focused. So that
we’re in the business of serving Memphis through making great music rather in the business of
making great music.
Fleur describes the symphony-going audience as a pyramid, with a very small tip of committed
(and aging) supporters—a group numbering in the low hundreds—and descending to broader and
broader strata of less and less involved and committed concert-goers. The pyramid bottoms out with
those who might go to a classical concert once in a given year, or might once have attended a concert,
or who might consider the experience. The redesign of the MSO, with all of its attendant programs, is
partly intended to bring in new constituents at every level of the pyramid simultaneously by broadening
appeal and access.
This is a fundamental change in how symphonies operate, and its manifestation in Memphis is
not an isolated transition; across the country, symphonies in particular and arts organizations in general
are reacting in similar ways. Gaylon Patterson, the assistant principal second violinist of the MSO, acted
as the MSO representative in ROPA, the Regional Orchestra Players Association, for several years, and
views the change as one rooted in commitment to the mission:
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The orchestras that are doing well are the ones that are trying not to be so traditional in their
roles, especially in the smaller orchestras, where it’s very hard, because pay scales are very low
and people have to hold umpteen jobs just to make a living. The level of commitment is hard to
maintain, even more so than in the major orchestras that are paying well. It speaks to a level of
dedication that by far outweighs what the compensation offers, so people who do this work are
very committed to it—there’s no other reason to do it.
In concert with this change, Fleur has attempted to reorganize the organizational structure of the
symphony itself. Instead of a flowchart and hierarchy, he now envisions overlapping spheres of
responsibility, with music-making in the center (see appendix 1). For Fleur, the intersection of
accountability (revenue), patron engagement (audience appeal), and artistic engagement (musicians)
lies at the heart of a successful reinvention of the MSO:
The model is people, service, product. What do we have at the symphony? 85% of our budget
is people. You invest in the right people, that’s the artistic engagement circle, you deliver the
right service, that’s the patron engagement circle, if you do that, we’re not going to profit, but
we’re going to have solvency. That’s ultimately what will create the business model. That third
circle is accountability. All of our measurement comes out of there. You can redefine it any
way, but the heart of it is this notion, and Opus One embodies it perfectly, is this new notion
that what we’re trying to do, for the Symphony, is our mission—that we’re trying to deploy our
people in ways that create meaningful opportunities for both our artists and our audience, that
are truly relevant to the community, and that ultimately are tied to revenue sources.
It was against this backdrop of change in historical position, immediate solvency and viability,
and adaptation of vision that Gilmore proposed the Opus One project. Both she and Fleur attribute the
roots of the project to reshuffling already going on within the organization, but both also recognize that
this change went far beyond any current offering of the MSO. The institution would now have to
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embrace the input and opinions of musicians, a difficult transition for an orchestra that had traditionally,
based on national models, as Fleur says, “treated musicians collectively somewhere on the spectrum
between the servant who comes in the backdoor and the gifted child.” The new model would place all
musicians, staff, and management on a level playing field, and while the MSO had been heading in that
direction in some ways, embracing the concept fully represented a true leap of faith in what the
organization could become.
The Creation of Opus One: A New Type of Program
1. Making the Idea Reality: The Initial Challenge
Gilmore’s idea did not arise out of a vacuum, but it still represented the most radical shift for
the symphony to date, and there was no protocol for developing such an idea when it came from a
musician rather than management. The concept of Opus One as Gilmore presented would mean:

unconducted rehearsals and performances;

new, alternative venues;

new marketing techniques to reach a younger audience;

musician-led efforts at every level of concert preparation;

new programming formats.
In its initial stages, the presentation of the Opus One concept brought to the forefront the tension and
distrust that characterized an organization in a difficult financial position, with three key actors, Fleur,
Gilmore, and a powerful board member, Paul Bert, each struggling to determine what to do with this
idea. Bert had approached Gilmore earlier that year and issued a challenge to innovate. She recalls:
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It was in my subconscious that back in September when I had made this conductor site-visit to
Washington with Paul, he spent a lot of that time telling me anecdote after anecdote of how his
success in his business career in many ways was to perceive potential innovation and potential
leaders and groom them and send them off. He was saying, “You’re that kind of person, and I’m
waiting to be excited by something that’s happening in the symphony.” He was ready to get
excited and back something new, not more of the same. When I told him about Opus One
[several months later], Paul immediately saw potential—he saw potential that I didn’t even
want to think about, like change of the whole nature of symphony orchestras to being musicianrun.
Gilmore knew she had the support of Paul Bert; she also saw the dangers of a board member
micromanaging MSO efforts. Fleur recalls the tension of the early stages, but doesn’t dwell on it:
Initially there was a moment, almost clandestine, with Susanna and Paul trying to feel out
various people, and the way that Paul deliberately tried to keep it as far from the staff as
possible until it was an idea that shaped.
Gilmore, on the other hand, presents her decision as strategic:
That first meeting happened relatively fast, within two weeks, where I had to pitch this to the
staff, and some people kept probing with all of these ways this could fail, and finally Paul just
said, “I’m willing to write this check,” and what could anyone do? Whether it was right or
wrong, it gave me ammunition to make the pieces fit together.
By involving Bert, Gilmore set wheels into motion that wouldn’t now be stopped. She now faced three
major hurdles: convincing the staff and management, convincing the musicians, and convincing the
Memphis audience. Wrapped up in each of these stages were daunting logistical and resource-based
tasks of creating such an unprecedented concert experience. In theory, the idea was a good one, but
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were there, in fact, venues in the city that could support such performances? How exactly did one go
about running unconducted symphony rehearsals, creating the festive atmosphere she envisioned,
choosing which musicians would take part in marketing or second-half performances, securing alcohol
and security or, most importantly, funding? The project soon proved to be far more complicated than
Gilmore originally envisioned, beginning with the pitch to staff and management.
A meeting was scheduled with the staff in late May (near the end of the season and just before
the musicians dispersed for the summer). During the final concert weekend, Gilmore felt out various
other musicians about the project:
I made a deliberate effort to go first to the people who always felt negative about the things we
did and they were the ones who kind of wrapped me up in their negativity, because people look
at me, and I’m the musician that when they’re angry at the symphony they think I’m part of the
organization, for better or for worse. But I was even getting good results from them.
Armed with positive responses, Gilmore prepared for the staff meeting:
I had a meeting with a few people before the official meeting with the whole staff about two
weeks later, the one with all of the staff and some key board members. I had to have a budget,
figure out how to use Excel, get information about what things cost, and do this document
called a project model. It was something the administration wanted, and I was helped by staff
to put it in a format that the top people wanted to see—I was like a poodle in an obstacle
course, being told, if you want to do this, you have to jump through my hoops. Prove to me that
you can talk like I talk. It was exhausting, not the way I like to work. I think that’s part of why
this succeeded; it wasn’t just another musician with a hair-brained idea, which happens a lot,
but a musician who felt strongly enough about the idea to be really uncomfortable and try to
learn these skills. I don’t know what the point of the project model was; it showed up at that
meeting and everyone went, “Wow,” and then maybe it was used again or maybe not, I don’t
know.
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Ryan wanted to talk about risks, risks, risks, instead of possible successes. But what
came out of that meeting were a couple of good things. And that was the public moment where
Paul backed me. He said he was willing to write a check for ten thousand dollars.
In fact, Bert held back his offer throughout the meeting, suddenly chiming in at the end of the meeting
that he would offer the funds for the project. Even with the promise of some financial investment,
there was an atmosphere of cynicism, tension was still present, the risks were very real, the staff was
still somewhat suspicious though cautiously hopeful, and the project stood a real chance of dying before
it really got started.
Then, a week or so later, Fleur attended attended the League of American Orchestras
convention in Chicago, and he spoke to others from around the country about Opus One. In the
process, he discovered that few or no orchestras were trying anything this adventurous. Then, at the
same conference, he talked to a representative from the Mellon Foundation—the same organization
that provided initial funding for Leading from Every Chair. The MSO, as one musician put it, was the
“good child, because he used that money well,” and Fleur took the opportunity to pitch the new idea to
the Mellon representative. A little later, he called Gilmore from Chicago and told her the prospects
looked good, that she should “think big” about what she need to make a start. Within a month, Fleur
had secured a $40,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to study and prepare for unconducted
performances and Gilmore had proposed uses for the money that included travelling with a group of
musicians to New York City to meet with the Orpheus Ensemble, a musician-run, unconducted group,
and to meet with Eric Booth, the arts consultant who helped to develop Leading From Every Chair. Most
importantly, the grant gave real possibility to an abstract idea and generated not only buy-in but a sense
of excitement from key staff and management players.
The next hurdle, then, was to bring musicians on board. Here, the very nature of the project’s
development was both a benefit and a challenge—most of the initial work was completed, out of
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necessity, at the tail end of one season and over the summer, and thus without the knowledge of the
larger body of musicians, though word had leaked out about the project. Gilmore is aware of the
difficulty of pitching a project that relies on democracy and ownership in this way:
When the initial idea of different committees fit in, in that first week or so, I just plopped people
in based on who seemed enthusiastic so far. That certainly wasn’t a democratic process
because I hadn’t been able to talk to the orchestra as a whole, it was just based on wanderings
through the rehearsals and breaks. Then we had to pick who was going to New York and start
spreading information and make sure everybody knew what this was. That turned out to be
very difficult because of the timing. For a long time, I couldn’t tell everybody anything because
nothing was official, and then we weren’t together for the summer and I was out of the country
for all of August, and so I then had to fight this perception that we had withheld information.
We’re still fighting it, and we’re going to tremendous lengths to do some damage control, to try
to disseminate the information, not to seem like a secret cadre of people who are in the know
or in charge or who got to go to New York. It probably would have happened regardless
because ideas come from a person, not a committee. It’s a catch-22; the idea came from me
and worked maybe in part because of that, but because it came from me, I have to convince my
colleagues I’m not making some sort of power grab.
Nonetheless, several decisions helped to secure the investment and interest of the musicians. Fleur
credits consultant Eric Booth with the idea to distribute a survey early on that asked musicians to
comment on the project. The trick, here, was that every item on the survey, which was largely
constructed in multiple choice format, contained four possible negative answers and only one positive
answer, allowing musicians to vent their frustrations and express concerns right from the start. “The
whole idea is to neutralize the negative energy,” says Fleur, “because the value system we’ve built
before has been this quality of passive-aggressiveness.” In fact, of the nineteen surveys returned, only
one expressed mostly negative responses, but even so the surveys raised valuable questions and
concerns that the staff and lead musicians could address.
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By this time, it was clear that Opus One would become a reality, at least for one season; funding
was beginning to appear as Paul Bert spread interest among board members and other MSO patrons
and time had been included in the schedule for the concerts. Still, more significant buy-in from
musicians was imperative. Without musician ownership, the project wouldn’t succeed in either its
short-term goals—creating a strong concert experience—nor its long-term objectives of redesigning the
organization.
In late September, a committee of seven musicians travelled to New York City to meet with
Booth, observe and discuss processes with the Orpheus ensemble, and reflect on the survey data. It was
during this trip that ownership truly began to emerge. Gilmore recalls a particular moment when she
was at last able to sit back and watch as other musicians began to volunteer for roles in the new
organizational scheme; the other musicians even advised her not to take on an official role as supervisor
of the project, preferring to create a more communal structure of responsibility. By the time the ad hoc
committee returned from New York, seven “bucket leaders” had been identified, many of them
musicians who had been involved in other projects such as Leading From Every Chair, but some coming
from other constituencies (one musician, for instance, was a per service bass player who would donate
his time to Opus One without the benefit of the extra payments involved in the capacity-building clause
of the master agreement). Gilmore would be the bucket leader for development, but other musicians
stepped up to take control of six other areas: marketing, PR, hospitality, tickets and alcohol, production,
and internal communications.
Upon the return of this group from New York, things moved swiftly. A full meeting of the
symphony musicians and staff convened and the idea was officially presented to the full organization.
The committee of musicians (not management) presented the ideas and findings from the trip, including
a possible non-binding code of conduct for rehearsals (unlike union regulations for rehearsal time, for
instance). A musician-only blog was created to allow internal communication to flow more freely;
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management and staff were not included. By October 14, two more important pieces of the puzzle had
fallen into place. An itemized vote on the code of conduct showed that over 90% of musicians accepted
every part of the proposal. In addition, when core musicians officially opted in to capacity-building
activities for the season, nine chose to work on Opus One (others chose no project, Leading From Every
Chair, or the Soulsville Charter School as their focus). This brought the number of musicians working in a
staff capacity to sixteen, or nearly half of the full-time core.
2. The Way Forward: Opus One’s First Season and Organization
At the time of this writing, there are three Opus One performances scheduled for the 2009-2010
season. The first, which takes place in December, is a limited preview performance for patrons and
other possible supporters—a dry run of sorts. The second performance, scheduled for March, takes
place in an ornate but empty bank lobby in downtown Memphis and features the music of Beethoven
and a big band performance by the horns of the MSO. The third and final concert will help round out
the season in May; the venue is a privately owned performance space called the Warehouse in
downtown Memphis’s up and coming South Main arts district. Approximately $25,000 has been raised
for the season (the initial goal was $30,000), with one donor promising to pay more if there is a shortfall
at the end of the series. Nonetheless, says Fleur, this revenue may be misleading, in that most of the
donors are already MSO patrons and supporters:
There’s always been some concern on the funding front. In every single case where we’ ve
gotten gifts, it’s not really new dollars, it’s shifting around dollars that were already being given.
At the end of the day, we have to make sure it’s generating new bodies and new dollars,
otherwise we’re spinning our wheels.
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As development continues, the hope is that new donors will appear.
In the midst of this early success, however, deep concerns persist. The two most clearly
identifiable of these are continued resistance and the changing scope of musicians’ responsibilities. The
first of these worries Gilmore; she sees a small but entrenched pocket of resistance from musicians
themselves, though other stakeholders evaluate the significance of this resistance differently. According
to Gilmore, there are two sources of potential protest:
Resistance comes from people who resist the musicians leading this, and also from people who
resist their worldview of what a symphony is changing. It’s generational, somewhat. There’s a
sense of loss from some people about not being able just to play.
Gaylon Patterson, a twenty-four year veteran of the symphony, agrees, but focuses on possible positive
outcomes:
Some of us saw the change coming down the pike years ago. There are other people who have
been more tunnel-vision oriented, who say, “That’s not what I signed up to do; I’m going to do
my job.” For me personally, I’m further down that road because I’ve been involved in all that
conversation…If you go and do the background on people’s level of dissatisfaction in orchestras,
it has to do with lack of control very often, because you’re told everything about your job—
follow orders—yet we as artists are trained to be original, creative people, to have original
ideas. There may be a program where there’s not a single piece that I would choose to play, but
it’s my responsibility to do my best. Changing that to add more say in what we do and how we
do it, there’s something valuable in that. There’s always going to be resisters, but even they will
come around, I think.
Most of those involved in the project agree that outright resistance is isolated to a few members
of the organization and that even skepticism is shrinking. There is also, here, an organization challenge
not faced by those in the private sector: MSO musicians, because of union rules embodied in the master
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agreement between management and musicians, are nearly impossible to dismiss from their posts after
the first year (when they gain tenure). For this reason, the MSO cannot anticipate eliminating hostility
to the idea by eliminating personnel—the idea of performing with the “right people at the right time,”
as Fleur puts it, must in some ways be reflected in performances of the people who are in place at the
right time, whatever attitudes they hold. Nonetheless, Fleur points out that nearly one third of the MSO
has turned over since his arrival, and expects more voluntary turnover in the next several years as
musicians adapt, or fail to adapt, to the new organizational model. In the meantime, Gilmore and other
musicians who support the change must answer to colleagues who do not, not only through meetings
and correspondence but on the spot, in rehearsals.
A second challenge for the organization is more deeply embedded and presents less clear
possibilities for resolution. As Patterson and Gilmore hint above, the assumption of responsibilities
normally relegated to staff and management by musicians may sometimes feel at odds with their artistic
sensibilities even as they offer more control and input. Patterson feels the shift in expectation acutely:
It’s a double-edged sword. It’s an awful lot of responsibility. I feel a lot of pressure from it. I
feel that the future of the entire organization right now is largely in the hands of the musicians
and how they respond to challenges that are coming down the pike, and that’s a lot of pressure.
If the orchestra folds, I’ll feel like it’s a personal failure to solve the problems that need solving.
Not that I can or should do it on my own, but if we all just say, that’s somebody else’s problem,
then we’re done. The pressure, I don’t like—most people that have that kind of pressure are
considerably higher up in their organizations and aren’t worried about paying their grocery bill
each week. The level of responsibility compared to compensation is absurd, really. It’s hard not
to resent that. That’s the negative side. The positive side is that if I do something, and it helps
the bottom line or the public image or it helps fulfill a need in the city, there is a sense of
accomplishment that comes with that…it’s a gratifying thing to do, it’s an intangible.
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Similarly, Gilmore, as concertmaster and initiator of the idea, has found herself constantly balancing the
demands on her time:
It’s hard for me; when I start to practice, now, I have to fight this feeling of guilt that I should be
working on Opus One, doing development, whatever. This week, I probably had three days
where I didn’t practice other than MSO rehearsal because of constant meetings. That’s not
good for art, it’s not good for me as an artist. But the old model doesn’t exist, not in a country
where the arts aren’t subsidized.
The need to balance the artistic demands of a symphony that wishes to perform at the highest possible
level with the flattening of the organization promises to present logistical and artistic challenges on an
ongoing basis.
A Picture of Success: The Future of Opus One and the MSO
All of those involved in the Opus One project are tempted by simple definitions of what a
successful program might look like. Fleur, for instance, presents success initially in terms of artist
ownership and fulfillment:
My take is the project itself can actually be a major failure, if there are ten fronts and it fails on
nine of the ten fronts it can actually still be a major organizational success. And the one thing
that has to work is it has to be musically fulfilling for the artists who are participating, and if it’s
musically fulfilling for the artists who are participating, it means that they’ve learned something
along the way about how to communicate. If it means that they’ve also learned something in
trying to do all of the other stuff—the logistics, etc.—all of those can fail, nobody can show up,
there can be no chairs on stage, it can be too hot, the sound could be bad, but if we’ve achieved
the artistic and people feel good, we have the ground then to say, “Well, why didn’t those other
things work and what would you do differently next time?” after we construct a lot of feedback
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to each and that’s the key. That’s been the obstacle, not just that holds us back but that holds
every orchestra back, is we just don’t know how to talk to each other.
Patterson, on the other hand, paints a picture of success in terms of audience fulfillment:
I would consider it a success if the audience that comes has a positive experience, whatever that
means to them. Even if it’s a small audience. If it’s an audience that we don’t normally see in
the concert hall, that’s a plus…especially if it’s someone who shows up at Opus One, then five
years down the road shows up at a concert hall and isn’t scared of the experience, that’s a
measure of success.
And Gilmore sees the project as a spearhead for changing the MSO’s identity in the city as well as for
fulfilling the needs of an organization with lackluster morale:
My definition of success is a little touchy-feely. I have a lot of high aspirations in terms of
rebranding the symphony in the city, and that younger people feel it’s cool to go a concert and
be seen there, and it’s not stuffy or highbrow. I want this formula of mixing classical and nonclassical music to succeed in keeping classical alive, and people to realize that watching a
performance up close is an exhilarating experience. But I also want this to be something the
musicians own, that we feel proud of, that we feel we are playing better than ever and with a
level of energy and interaction that has not been seen. If at any point someone in the last chair
of the violins has a moment where they make a comment that is actually tried, to me that
building of self-esteem is worth anything. There are big picture goals, but I want this to be
something that keeps our souls alive.
At heart, the project is a focal point for the MSO in part because it hits on every need faced by
the organization, and as such imparts symbolic importance at several levels. Opus One seeks to attract
new audience members, generate new revenue, inspire musicians and management, create civic
connections and purpose, and, not least, create community in a way that symphonies have rarely seen
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before. These complex and interdependent goals both energize those closest to the project and make
their work more difficult; at this late date, for example, there are still deep discussions both online and
in person among constituents about branding and marketing. On the one hand, these discussions lie in
the realm of work by committee, but on the other hand, they reflect the difficulty of summing up in
simple terms a project that is complex in both its public manifestation and its private aspirations.
Nonetheless, excitement about the project continues to grow, and orchestra members have
begun to share their vision of what one member of the organization calls an “open-source symphony;”
word filters out through new avenues for the MSO, including Facebook and alternative city publications.
And, as each new member of the community claims a stake in putting the project together, others find
themselves having to release the very control they worked hard to gain—as soon as one committee
chair delegates his or her new-found responsibility, he or she also relinquishes that responsibility.
Decisions are now being made by musicians about, as an oboe player put it in a piece he wrote for MSO
patrons, everything from the pieces on the program to “the napkin under your drink at the concert
reception.”
An early publicity photo for the project shows the same oboe player, instrument in hand, on a
city street in downtown Memphis. The player and his instrument are partly visible, partly blurry, while
the focus of the shot is the musician’s hand, outstretched, with the word “LISTEN” written in block
letters on his palm. The message is not lost: Opus One represents a new way for the audience to listen,
for musicians to listen to one another, and for the organization to listen to its environment. Whether or
not Opus One succeeds in quantifiable terms, there is little doubt that it has created a new
organizational model and a new expectation of organizational function for the MSO.
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Part Two: An Analysis of Opus One
More than twenty years ago, Peter F. Drucker famously included the symphony as a model
organization for companies looking to restructure. In the classic corporate model, Drucker (1988)
argued, a symphony would have multiple vice-presidents and middle managers,
but that’s not how it works. There is only the conductor CEO—and every one of the musicians
plays directly to that person without an intermediary. And each is a high-grade specialist,
indeed an artist. (p. 6)
In one sense, Drucker hit on a crucial concept: symphonies do not operate according to a corporate
model, and yet they achieve a remarkably efficient output for the number of people involved, producing
sometimes numerous full programs each week, week after week, under the direction of a single
conductor. What Drucker missed, however, was the complexity of the symphony orchestra and, by
neglecting that complexity, he presented an oversimplification of the system. Efficiency, after all, is not
the main goal of an orchestra, nor is, necessarily, solvency. Moreover, the high-grade level of individuals
sometimes goes unfulfilled or is even diminished by the traditional process.
Perhaps more than any other organization, symphonies embody paradoxes. To some extent,
these paradoxes mirror those one might find in corporate organizations, such as the tension between
empowering others and retaining the power of command (Barach & Eckhart, 1996). Yet in the
symphony context such paradoxes run deeper than one might find elsewhere. Orchestral musicians
such as those in the MSO are trained to think creatively, artistically, and collaboratively; most have
played in chamber ensembles and all have likely played in small groups without artistic oversight as part
of their education. In orchestral rehearsals, however, musicians rarely interact, and all communication
is passed in extremely deferential terms through the conductor. As Levine and Levine (1995) describe it:
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During rehearsals or concerts, musicians experience a total lack of control over their
environment. They do not control when the music starts, when the music ends, or how the
music goes. They don’t even have the authority to leave the stage to attend to personal needs.
They are, in essence, rats in a maze, at the whim of the god with the baton. (p. 20)
Moreover, symphony musicians are specialists on their own instruments, moreso than any conductor
can be, and are also highly trained musical practitioners, yet issues of pitch, ensemble, and technical
performance often go unaddressed because to raise such issues would challenge the authority of the
conductor. Many orchestras create great music and art despite these paradoxes, but research has
noted the deep dissatisfaction some musicians feel when they lack control over their work product and
environment (Levine & Levine, 1995, Muringhan & Conlon, 1991).
In addition, if musicians have traditionally been uninvolved in performance decisions in
symphonies, their role in governance is generally even more marginal. There are multiple leaders of
such organizations, including boards, administrative managers, and artistic directors, but rarely are
musicians themselves involved in high-level decision-making or key issues of governance and strategy
(Allmendinger, et al., 1996, Noteboom, 2003). A number of writers have called for changes in this
structure and for the inclusion of musicians in roles of governance, including a notable appeal for a
“paradigm shift” in response to ailing finances and shrinking audiences by Thomas Wolf in 1992 and
responses by various proponents of changes in leadership for orchestras in the following years
(Dempster, 2002). By and large, however, musicians continue to function in the traditional roles of cogs
in the overall performance machine.
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Opus One: Organizational Reform and the MSO
In undertaking the Opus One project, the Memphis Symphony has tied itself to an organizational
risk perhaps greater than even the series’ founding musicians realize. On the one hand, the breakdown
of the traditional paradoxes of orchestras and the accompanying re-layering of governance, autonomy
of work, and creative and practical control may well contribute to a new structure that sets the
organization apart from others and, ultimately, improves both its product and its bottom line. On the
other hand, such restructuring in a time of flux (even though such restructuring could perhaps only
happen in a time of flux) carries with it some dangers: of financial failure, of increasing hostility and
tension between musicians rather than decreasing them, or of distracting from the important job of
choosing a new artistic director.
Potential Successes
There are those who might see increased control by musicians as a drawback for the Memphis
Symphony , who would believe that a symphony does not need content musicians but only musicians
who do their jobs. A growing body of research and opinion, however, speaks to the contrary. To begin
with, musicians do not take on positions or roles within the orchestra for simple reasons. In a study of
British string quartets, for instance, Murnighan and Conlon (1991) discovered that string musicians tend
to see their work as leading toward a “spiritual experience” (p. 166) and that for these musicians
performance and rehearsal is aimed at inspiration and transcendence. Levine and Levine (1996)
similarly identify the stressor on orchestral musicians of striving for a perfect ideal that can never be
achieved.
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It requires little imagination to conceive of the notion that such creatively-oriented individuals
would seek control over their own artistic and practical work environment. It should be taken into
account, as well, that many musicians in the MSO are of a new generation, one that expects a flatter
model and more frequent communication. Bova and Kroth (2001), for instance, note that younger
workers such as those of generation X embrace change, independence, diversity, and wish to create
their own learning environments (p. 58); musicians are, in many ways, constant learners.
In this sense, Opus One allows a conduit for expression and creativity that many MSO musicians,
despite the supposedly artistic and creative nature of their work, rarely experience. Moreover, it
extends that conduit to control over the work environment itself and not just the work product. The
potential success for the organization is more than symbolic; musicians as fully involved workers might
allow the organization to reduce overhead costs, to maximize the potential of its employees, and to
produce more efficient, more creative, or more appealing products. While not every MSO series or
production will likely be run, ever, in the Opus One model, the project offers possible reforms to
organizational structure that might conceivably stretch into many arenas. Toeplitz (2003 ) recognizes
the crucial nature of such involvement:
A particularly important part of becoming a collaborative orchestra organization involves the
musicians seeing themselves as partners, particularly with the board and management. We all
need to leave behind the traditional “we/they” adversarial relationship. Musicians need to
accept increased responsibility with authority and acquire a deeper sense of ownership. They
need to join the other constituencies in understanding that everyone has a stake in the final
results—artistically and economically—whether those results are positive or negative. (pp. 136137)
The emphasis here on involvement in both success and failure is an important one for Opus One, which
rests so deeply on musicians’ leadership for achieving its goals.
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In addition to the possible benefits of increased control, there exists the intangible but crucial
potential for increased morale and artistic fulfillment in both a specific and general sense among
musicians. Levine and Levine (1996) point to one danger that a chronic lack of control can exert on
musicians: infantilization (p. 22). Musicians subjected to a constant, patrimonial system can resort to
acting like children and creating a we/they dichotomy that deepens with every decision made by
organizational leaders. Ultimately, such divisions extend to the music itself, often in the form of passiveaggressive response through performance rather than any other means. At the same time, however,
musicians who are given control and input may well accept even imperfect performances as valuable
and fulfilling experiences.
A final potential success, and possibly the most important in terms of the sheer survival of the
MSO organization, is the very real potential for the project to benefit the symphony financially and in
terms of community relationships and image. The various constituents of the organization are reluctant
to speculate about such ends, falling back frequently on discussion of artistic aims and achievement.
Nonetheless, Opus One has already garnered well over $60,000 of income for the MSO and has brought
a number of new actors to the table. Recently, for instance, a host committee of fifty couples—none of
whom are current patrons of the organization—was formed to help raise awareness about the project
throughout the city. In a time of economic uncertainty for the organization, Opus One has not only
sustained itself so far but shows definite signs of broadening the appeal and audience of the
organization—all the more reason for the MSO to ensure its success, since the visibility of the program
also increases the risks of the undertaking.
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Potential Failures
Despite multiple avenues through which a project such as Opus One might increase
participation and value to the community and bottom line for the Memphis Symphony, the project is
not without peril. Most notably, one of the very aspects of the organization that makes Opus One a
possibility—its current position between artistic directors—could later prove a deep source of conflict
and tension. Obviously, a conductor who does not appreciate relinquishing control or allowing
increased input from musicians could enter the organization to encounter, or produce, hostility. Levine
and Levine (1996) note that most conductors already resent having control taken away from them after
150 minutes of rehearsal. A music director voluntarily giving control of an entire series to musicians,
and with it perhaps a level of control during all other rehearsals, is a leap for any orchestra.
There is, however, a less obvious pitfall embedded in the introduction of Opus One during the
year of a conductor search. As part of its move toward increasing inclusion of musicians, the MSO has
included six musicians on the search committee itself, four more than is called for by the master
agreement and half of the total committee (several of these musician representatives, including Gilmore
and Patterson, are also heavily involved in Opus One). This musician involvement is in keeping with the
spirit of Opus One, but it poses the potential hazard of deepening distrust and tension rather than
increasing it. If the musicians disagree over the choice of a conductor (which, at the time of this writing,
they do to some extent), friction could increase; if that disagreement is in part tied to the conductor’s
feelings about Opus One, the friction could be exacerbated.
Noteboom (2003) notes the importance of civility and trust in orchestral projects that require
collaborative governance. Levine and Levine (1996), who discuss a number of “stressors” (p. 15) faced
by orchestral musicians, fail to mention civility as a factor, but those authors do discuss the normative
myth of the conductor as a divinely mandated leader and of the deferential manner in which rehearsals
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are conducted. Opus One threatens that normative structure. Most telling, a study of string quartets,
which research often suggests contain generally happier and more content musicians than do
orchestras, recognizes the deep distress conflict can bring to musical ensembles (Murnigan & Conlon,
1991). Among the nature of destructive conflict in such ensembles, those authors cite examples in
which musicians possess different perceptions about the nature of conflicts, the danger of facile
compromise, the danger of avoiding conflict entirely, and the danger of continuous conflict. With a
much larger number of musicians whose disagreements run to other areas of work such as the
conductor search, those pitfalls are omnipresent and could, in fact, prove impossible to avoid. As Levine
and Levine (1996) also note, “Adding one’s colleagues to the list of taskmasters may not seem very
attractive to many musicians, even with reciprocal privileges” (p. 23).
A second jeopardy posed by Opus One is that the solution could be, in effect, worse than the
problem, that musicians could find themselves doing more work for few or unimportant results, that
burnout and de-motivation could result. In the traditional model of the symphony as Noteboom (2003)
describes it, “Everyone had his or her place and was expected to stay in it. If the performance was bad,
blame the musicians. If too little gift income was raised, blame the staff. If there was scandal, blame the
board” (p. 34). In the MSO, musicians have taken on roles that could allow for blame in all areas, from
performance to logistics to fund-raising. Moreover, the musicians have committed themselves to a
heavy load of work in addition to the full slate of performance and rehearsal demanded of orchestral
players. The energy and vibrancy that many musicians bring to the project at present could detract from
motivation to the same extent if finances or emotions turn sour.
Finally, as a new music director enters the scene, board members change, and natural musician
turnover takes its course, there is a danger of the organization developing contradictory identities.
Gilmore and Patterson, among many others, have developed images of themselves as musician-leaders;
take that image away, and what is left is not the old model of the line worker, but a more dysfunctional
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model of a worker who wants and is used to control and isn’t offered it. Gilmore’s first forays into the
“corporate” world of symphony management are revealing, here, since, as one author describes it,
orchestra’s identities are “composed of contradictory elements because they contain actors (artisans
and administrators) who come from different professions; as a result, different groups of actors cherish
and promote different aspects of the group’s identity” (Glynn, 2000, p. 285). One might expand Glynn’s
statement to include board members, patrons, staff, and grant organizations, but the key relationship is
likely to be that between conductor, executive director, and a few musicians. If these actors cannot
envision the same direction for the MSO within the next crucial months, much deeper rifts than simple
disagreements over rehearsal procedures could easily develop.
Conclusion
Glaze and Wolf (2000) suggest that the need to reshape organizations is, for the world of orchestras, not
merely a luxury:
The crisis in the orchestra business is so significant that even the largest orchestras are no
longer ignoring reality. In smaller communities, the very survival of orchestras depends on
change. Significant and exciting things are happening on the stage, in the community, and in the
leadership structures of many orchestras.
Change for the Memphis Symphony Orchestra fits this description; Opus One represents not only a
restructuring of the MSO for the sake of morale or greater inclusion, though those are certainly
byproducts of the series, but a piece of an ongoing effort to salvage an institution that has been
dangerously close to ceasing to exist in recent years.
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Will Opus One succeed? It seems likely at the time of this writing. What is certain, however, is
that Opus One has resulted already in a number of lessons for orchestras and similar organizations
looking to create new frameworks and programs that ensure productivity for a new climate. Among
these lessons come the determinations that:

Symphonies contain an enormous reservoir of untapped potential in its musicians and the
creative alliances that can be formed between musicians and other constituents;

Musicians understand and personalize aspects of organizational crisis and structure far beyond
the scope of their immediate and traditional roles, particularly when there is a compelling
organizational need for them to do so;

Organizational reform involves a constant process of working in small groups and then letting go
of control;

Structuring new organizational models and new partnerships involves planned communication,
particularly internally;

Reforms to organizations do not occur in isolation—they are linked to all other aspects of the
organization, and multiple actors and outcomes must be anticipated;

The heart of any reform effort must be a shared sense of identity and mission, which in turn
requires deep discussion of identity and mission at multiple levels;

Not all actors adjust to organizational restructuring at the same rate—patience is needed as
information is disseminated and musicians, staff, board members, and the public come to terms
with what that information means;

The new model of symphony success, especially for mid-level and smaller symphonies, will
require new models of community partnership and engagement;

Musicians exist in a high-stress, paradoxical environment that will not be entirely alleviated by
any reform and therefore tension will naturally accompany any new programs or series—here,
again, communication is a key factor in success;

Success is measured differently by different actors in the organization, but some generally
agreed-upon measures should be included in the process.
The organizational landscape of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra is undoubtedly changing, and with
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that change there will arise both costs and benefits that are currently unforeseen. As the MSO builds an
active citizenry of musician-leaders, however, it is recreating the image of the traditional symphony
orchestra in a new mold.
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Works Cited
Allmendinger, J., Hackman, J. R., & Lehman, E. V. (1996). Life and work in symphony orchestras. Musical
Quarterly, 80, 194-219.
Barach, J. A., & Eckhart, D. E. (1998). The paradoxes of leadership. In Leading Organizations: Perspectives
for a New Era. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Bova, B., & Kroth, M. (2001). Workplace learning and generation X. Journal of Workplace Learning, 13
(2), 57-65.
Dempster, D. J. (2002). The wolf report and Baumol’s curse: the economic health of American symphony
orchestras in the 1990s and beyond. Harmony, 15, 1-23. Retrieved December 3, 2009, from
http://www.soi.org/harmony/archive/15/Wolf_Report_Dempster.pdf
Drucker, P. F. (1988, January). The coming of the new organization. Harvard Business Review, 1-3.
Retrieved December 3, 2009, from http://www3.unicatt.it/unicattolica/
Formazione_Permanente/IREF/DSCO/Corso2_16_03_05.pdf
Glaze, N., & Wolf, T. (2000). Who's afraid of symphony orchestras? Grantmakers in the Arts, 17(1).
Retrieved December 3, 2009, from
http://www.giarts.org/library_additional/library_additional_show.htm?doc_id=402910
Glynn, M. A. (2000). When cymbals become symbols: conflict over organizational identity within a
symphony orchestra. Organization Science, 11(3), 285-298.
Levine, S., & Levine, R. (1996). Why they're not smiling: stress and discontent in the orchestra
workplace. Harmony, 2, 14-25.
Murnighan, J. K., & Conlon, D. E. (1991). The dynamics of intense work groups: a study of British string
quartets. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36, 165-185.
National Endowment for the Arts. (2008). Arts Participation 2008: Highlights from a National Survey.
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Washington, DC.
Noteboom, L. J. (2003). Good governance for challenging times: the spco experience. Harmony, 16, 2946. Retrieved December 3, 2009, from http://www.soi.org/harmony/archive/16/
Good_Gov_Noteboom.pdf
Toeplitz, G. (2003). From challenge to success: what must change? Harmony, 16, 133138. Retrieved December 3, 2009, from http://www.soi.org/harmony/archive/16/
Challenge_Success_Toeplitz.pdf
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Appendix One: Organizational Model of the MSO
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