Home Music Lane

It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

Not quite on Philadelphia

Perhaps the last word belongs to Marge Simpson: "The Springfield Symphony is playing Gustav Mahler in abject squalor!" There was more than a little truth in that episode. Viz the travails of Philadelphia, a concert hall at times is not much more than an occasion for highbrow civic bragging rights. I doubt the Philadelphia Orchestra would have had to file Bankruptcy if they hadn't been seduced into building a new hall, when there was more-than-ample handwriting on the wall that all their basic metric were in trouble.

The Philadelphia Orchestra didn't pay a single cent to build the Kimmel Center. All they did was agree to a 25 year lease and to let Ticket Philadelphia manage the rentals of The Academy of Music, which they do own.

And ironically, that's the problem.

By not having an ownership or even a management stake in the facility, the Orchestra limited itself in its ability to earn auxiliary earned revenue. My understanding is that the LA Philharmonic manages Disney Hall, and as a result, they take a percentage of the earned revenue from rentals, non-LA Phil programs they present, as well as the parking lot.

So I would argue that it would have behooved Philadelphia to have some kind of a stake in the new hall which would have allowed them to earn revenue from it.

And lastly, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that they really needed to go to a new hall.


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