Two representatives of the Monterey Symphony explain why they are leaving Sherwood Hall.

The Monterey Symphony is abandoning its longtime Salinas venue of Sherwood Hall and consolidating at Sunset Center in Carmel to save money. Salinas arts champion Trish Sullivan posted a call to boycott the “snooty symphony” on the symphony’s Facebook page.

Lee Rosen, the symphony’s board president and acting executive director, says, “Across the country you saw orchestras having difficult times relative to fundraising. We’ve had some good efforts and wonderful donors.”

But not enough.

Their annual operating budget for the 2016-17 fiscal year is about $2 million. It costs them $250,000 to do the Friday concerts and the free kids concerts in Sherwood Hall. Rosen says average paid attendance at the Friday concerts has hovered around 200-400 people, bringing in $30,000 a year.

That doesn’t square with a packed Disney’s Fantasia music/film experience, or John Wineglass’ world premiere of a symphonic work inspired by Big Sur. But Rosen says Sherwood Hall audiences may have been heavily padded with comps.

Carmel’s numbers: $300,000 in ticket revenue – 10 times more than Salinas. It costs $500,000 to present the 12 concerts there a year (six programs, each performed twice).

Nicola Reilly is the symphony’s new director of institutional advancement. “We looked at our peers in the orchestral world,” she says. “They were doing two performances per set. In many cases, one. The issue became, ‘Are we over-extending ourselves?’”

She says the symphony is trying to do outreach to several generations, filling in for declining music education, cultivating new audiences while keeping their base in place.

They could save about $250,000 by dropping Sherwood Hall, Reilly says. It’s just math, they claim. None of them wants this to look like a class issue. But if there was more fidelity to Salinas, could the organization find the right equation that makes it work? They did for 70 years.

Rosen says they want to help Salinas folks cross the so-called Lettuce Curtain into the hallowed Carmel venue. But that seems problematic. Rosen hints at why: “We know we need to give the Salinas audience a price break for this year so they understand the environment in Carmel.”

Why not axe one of the two Sunset Center concerts, perform one at each venue, and bring Peninsula folks out to Salinas where there’s more capacity?

“It would be disruptive to do that to our current base of audience,” Rosen says.

He says fundraising lagged beginning with the 2008-09 Great Recession.

“Fundraising is such a tricky business,” Reilly says. “I don’t think you can point fingers. The symphony’s had a fair amount of turnover in its staff and it needs to heal itself.”

“We’re all disappointed,” Rosen says. “But we want the symphony to survive and we believe that we can by taking these actions.” 

Walter Ryce is the Weekly’s Arts writer.