By Plain Dealer guest columnist Charles Michener
February 07, 2010, 3:00AM

Just three days had passed since the Cleveland Orchestra musicians
settled a bitter contract dispute and here they were in Miami, playing
the opening concert of their 2010 residency as though none of that had
happened.

“How do they manage to sound as though they’re all breathing at exactly
the same time?” asked a friend who was hearing the orchestra live for
the first time.

The short answer is, “Who knows?” A longer answer would have to include
the esprit drilled into them by their late Olympian taskmaster George
Szell, who enjoined them to “play like the best players in the world,
no matter who is conducting you.”

The Cleveland players are renowned for professional obedience, and so
it may be surprising to realize that fueling their discontent with the
package first offered by management was something deeper than money. In
conversations I’ve had with a dozen of them, a common theme has
emerged: They have felt largely shut out of meaningful communication
with the board and management, estranged from the decision-making that
is navigating their orchestra through difficult times.

When I asked one player if he felt “disregarded,” he said, “The better
word is ‘dismissed.’ ”

In recent years, the orchestra has encountered unprecedented
challenges. The traditional audience base has shrunk and dispersed.
Pillars of corporate and private support have become scarce. Five years
ago, the board and administration began cultivating greener pastures
with residencies in Miami and Vienna and annual appearances in Europe’s
top concert halls — a “turnaround” strategy that has paid dividends in
prestige, player morale and new sources of revenue.

Along the way, something essential got overlooked: the orchestra’s
symbiotic relationship with the city that gave it birth. During this
same period, subscription sales dropped sharply and the orchestra ran
up its current deficit of

$2 million. On Thursday nights, when many of the big donors are in
attendance, the number of empty seats has been painful to see –
especially from the stage.

What happened? For one thing, according to some of the players, too
many programs have seemed devised more for their potential bang out of
town than for nurturing local audiences. The marketing slogan, “Hear
What the World is Talking About,” has only reinforced the sense that
the orchestra is more concerned with winning approval elsewhere than in
its own back yard. The orchestra’s summer gig at Blossom Music Center
hasn’t aspired to being the “festival” it calls itself, but in its
serious programs has been content to be mostly a warm-up for Europe.

The players say that local marketing efforts have been diffident. For
example, said one, little attention has been paid to the needs of older
music lovers in the outlying suburbs who would happily come to concerts
in the city if group transportation were available. Several players
lamented the fact that Severance Hall has been mostly dark during the
orchestra’s absences — a missed chance for building new audiences and
maintaining the hall as a lively destination.

During the current season, the players have been cheered by
management’s new focus on Cleveland, notably the popular “Fridays@7″
concerts, which have debunked the myth that people under 40 aren’t
interested in classical music. But, as one went on to say, “So much
more needs to be done to fill those empty seats.”

American symphony orchestras, rooted in 19th-century music and
early-20th-century society, are just beginning to wake up to the fact
that they live in a new century of flux. Creative adaptability, not
reverence for the past, is essential to their survival. I believe that
to thrive in these times, the Cleveland Orchestra, like so many other
orchestras in similar straits, must explore ways of re-inventing itself
from within. For starters, the board and the administration might
invite the players to take a greater role in the affairs of the
organization, including fund-raising, marketing, education, program
planning and the crucial task of finding new revenue streams.

The so-called Big Five orchestras — in Cleveland, New York, Boston,
Chicago and Philadelphia — traditionally have barred the players from
such extramusical activities. Founded by business leaders, most of
America’s symphonies have followed a three-legged model: The board
gives money (and hires the executive director and music director);
management manages; the players play. There is no overlap of functions.

At three of the top European orchestras, things work differently. The
London Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna
Philharmonic are musicians’ cooperatives: The players choose the board,
the executive director, the music director and one another. “We are the
orchestra,” they say. “It’s only sensible for us to be engaged with the
institution as a whole.”

The most obvious benefit of properly channeled musician involvement is
the greater sense of ownership the players would feel, reducing the
chance of another bruising contract fight. A more far-reaching benefit
is that the Cleveland Orchestra could become a new model for other
American orchestras — one that would draw the most talented musicians
not only for its musical excellence, but also for the dynamism of its
institutional culture.

The players I talked to are bursting with ideas for developing ongoing
partnerships with local cultural and medical institutions (“And what
about the Cavs?”). They’re eager to experiment with new concert formats
designed to appeal to today’s eclectic musical tastes. They’re ready to
help devise new marketing initiatives aimed at young professionals who,
as one player put it, “might be surprised to discover that many of us
are young professionals, too.” And some of them might even be willing
to rethink the old labor contracts that lock them into inflexible
schedules and fixed compensation. For a more collaborative dynamism to
work, the trustees and management must be fully on board.

During a rehearsal in Miami, Dennis LaBarre, the recently named
president of the governing Musical Arts Association and a corporate
lawyer at the highly collaborative firm of Jones Day, went to the heart
of the matter: We, the trustees, he said, want to know you better and
we want you to know us better.

Instruments in hand, the musicians showed their approval by stamping
their feet.

Musically, the Cleveland players speak better than just about any
comparable group in the world. The orchestra’s overseers should open
their ears to what else they have to say.

Michener, a longtime cultural journalist, profiled the Cleveland
Orchestra for The New Yorker magazine in 2005. He is currently working
on a book about Cleveland called “The Hidden City.”