Gilbert Garcia: S.A. Symphony’s demise felt inevitable, but is still shocking

How can an occurrence feel inevitable and shocking at the same time? That’s what I’ve been asking myself since the news broke on Thursday night that the board of directors for the Symphony Society of San Antonio had voted to dissolve the symphony by filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. In the blink of an eye, a storied 83-year history came to an end. That’s the shocking part. It’s a history shaped by Max Reiter, a refugee from Nazi oppression, who landed in New York with $40 and a few letters of recommendation from European conductors. He moved to San Antonio in 1939 on the advice of New York friends who told him that pianos were selling like crazy in Texas. Over the first 37 years of the symphony’s history, it was a model of organizational stability. It had only two conductors during that period: Reiter and his hand-picked successor, Victor Alessandro.

After that, things got thornier. The San Antonio Symphony — like so many other orchestras across the country — was hurt by changing musical tastes and the ever-expanding glut of customized entertainment options competing for dollars and attention. Over the past 40 years, symphonies in Houston, Nashville, Baltimore, Honolulu, Long Beach, San Francisco, San Jose, St. Louis, San Diego, Colorado Springs and Savannah have endured some combination of canceled seasons, bankruptcy, deep payroll cuts and bitter contract disputes with musicians. In San Antonio, the pattern became familiar: a symphony periodically teetering on the edge of extinction and then getting rescued by a renewed community commitment to keep it alive. In December 1986, the Symphony Society demanded that the musicians accept a 30 percent payroll cut or face the cancellation of the 1987-88 season. A stalemate ensued and a group of symphony players formed their own collective, the Orchestra of San Antonio, which performed a series of concerts in the fall of 1987. Ultimately, then-Mayor Henry Cisneros brokered a deal and the symphony reemerged, with seven fewer members.