Andrew Waggoner used to stand before the Onondaga County Legislature and plead. In line behind representatives from a local battered women’s shelter, literacy program and other social service organizations, Waggoner would advocate local music and arts organizations.

Observing the stark contrasts between their needs and his, he said he felt like an idiot.

‘We were all competing for the same minuscule pot of money,’ Waggoner said. ‘I’m going to tell them not to give money to Vera House but to give it to me? Nobody wants to be in that position.’

It’s a position that Waggoner, interim co-director at Syracuse University’s Setnor School of Music, and others in the Syracuse community are now facing. The Syracuse Symphony Orchestra needs to raise $375,000 by Friday, or it will be forced to shut down its season four months early. The SSO must also raise an additional $445,000 by March 4 and a total of $1.75 million by Aug. 1 to complete its current season.

The SU community has fundraised, spread the word and brainstormed ideas for the SSO’s success. But with a struggling economy, many worry the Syracuse arts programs will be forced to the sidelines — a common predicament in cities across the nation.

‘We don’t want classical musicians taking money out of the hands of people who really need our help,’ Waggoner said. ‘But if, as a culture, we were serious about art and really understood its value on a human, on a spiritual, on a cultural level, then we’d find a way to make it work.’

The SSO, in its 50th anniversary season, has struggled with budget deficits and declining government and corporate support for the last three years. It announced a public fundraising campaign, ‘Keep the music playing,’ on Jan. 26 after appealing to the county legislature to release its $200,000 in emergency funds, leftover from its $404,465 total in allocated funds for the current season.

Legislators voted unanimously Tuesday to release the funds in two installments. The orchestra can receive the first $100,000 once it raises $375,000 in private donations and the second $100,000 installment once it raises the additional $445,000.

SU Chancellor Nancy Cantor committed the university’s support for the SSO and urged others to donate in a video appeal on SSO’s Facebook page. Kevin Quinn, senior vice president for public affairs at SU, said Cantor made a personal donation to the SSO, though he did not specify the amount.

Students, faculty and alumni of the Setnor School of Music have expressed their support, and many are affected personally.

SU and the city would suffer if the orchestra shut down, Waggoner said. But worse still, he said, there are many people who would probably go about their day, unaware of what happened, largely because of the declining interest in classical and orchestral music.

Waggoner said the school formed a working group to brainstorm imaginative ways for the school and orchestra to work together to ease the SSO’s long-term financial burdens. The group’s ideas are still broad, and none of its plans can help by the Friday deadline for funds, he said.

‘I think Syracuse and the university have a stake in wanting the symphony to continue, simply because it is excellent and there’s nothing else like it,’ Waggoner said. ‘And if it does go away for good, it will be next to impossible to get it started again.’

Mia Quatrone, a junior music education major, said she remembers watching a recent SSO performance and smiling ear to ear. She said the brasses were playing ridiculously loud. It was beautiful. And she was crying.

‘It’s just such a passionate and happy and enjoyable experience for me,’ she said. ‘Just hearing live classical, professionally played music conducted by such a great conductor.’

Today’s college generation is less appreciative of classical music than those in the past, Quatrone said. But classical music is in everything. Commercials. Ring tones. Everyday melodies. It’s important to sustain because it’s the foundation of everything, she said.

SU’s Oratorio Society, a vocal ensemble composed of SU students and community members, raised several thousand dollars Monday night for the orchestra, said Quatrone, who is a member of the choir.

Individuals are helping, too.

A few days after Liz Varga heard about the SSO’s financial appeal, she created the Facebook event ‘Crouse helps ‘keep the music playing.” The graduate student in music education invited fellow students and alumni to the event, urging them to donate $5. The event page immediately received comments from people who said they had donated.

Varga found out her Facebook event generated $800 as of Friday. 

‘I feel like if I only have a small amount to give, it’s not that much,’ Varga said. ‘But if I know a lot of people are giving a small amount, it adds up to a lot more.’

Setnor will suffer if the orchestra shuts down, Varga said. It would lose faculty members, several of whom are SSO musicians, and they would lose performance opportunities, she said.

Andrew Dressler, a junior percussion performance and political science major, said he and others in Setnor knew about the orchestra’s ongoing financial problems but were still surprised by their severity.

The SSO would be a loss for a medium-sized city like Syracuse, he said.

‘Not too many cities our size can claim a world-class orchestra like we can,’ he said. ‘This city is an unexpected place for an orchestra that good. The Syracuse Symphony Orchestra is something that this city and the whole region have to be proud of.’

Anthony Beattie, a sophomore vocal performance major, has been watching SSO performances since he was a freshman. He donated money from abroad in Strasbourg, France, when he found out what was happening. His mother donated, too, from New Jersey.

‘The arts are not a commodity, a privilege or a treat,’ Beattie said in an e-mail. ‘It’s a basic necessity and a basic human need.’

Music students are attracted to SU, he said, because they know there is a full-time professional orchestra with close ties to the university just down the road. There are not a lot of schools, for example, with choirs that get to sing the Brahms Requiem with a professional orchestra, he said. He called the experience ‘a young musician’s gold mine.’

Beattie also noted the revenue the SSO brings to Syracuse. In a public service announcement, music director Daniel Hege said the orchestra brings in $20 million to the region a year through salaries, home ownership, retail spending and taxes. Hege said the SSO is the largest arts employer in Central New York.

But Americans do not appreciate their orchestras and theatres, Beattie said. Other nations are embracing their music-making institutions during times of economic crisis, but Americans have decided the arts are simply not vital, he said.

‘Music was never designed to be a money-making scheme,’ he said. ‘It is an art that exists for its own self, not for making money.’

blbump@syr.edu

Published on February 2, 2011 at 12:00 pm