In a four-hour-long meeting on Thursday, the San Jose Symphony's
Board of Directors decided not to seek bankruptcy protection, scratched
together enough money to pay its musicians in full one more time, suspended
all music activity, created a new transition team with a specific action
agenda, elected a new chair, and then every director submitted a
resignation in order to give the new board chairman and the transition
team free hand.

The action followed the announcement on Monday by Dick Gourley, the
Symphony's acting CEO who is serving without compensation, that the
organization shut down effective immediately because it ran out of money
after carrying a deficit of $2.5 million for the past two years.  The San
Jose Symphony's operating budget is $7.8 million, and it has no endowment
or other restricted funds to use.

Gourley will head the transition team, which is to present a comprehensive
reorganization plan by Feb.  1, 2002.  "There will be a new San Jose
Symphony, and I will be out of the picture after that," Gourley told SF
Classical Voice.  (The timing seems to have been adjusted to the expected
birth around that date of the Silicon Valley investment firm executive's
first child.)

Two orchestra-musician members attended Thursday's critical board
meeting, along with three more invited by Gourley.  "We wanted as much
representation by the musicians as possible," he said.  SJSO music director
Leonid Grin is conducting in Austria, and he was told of the board's
decisions.  The matter of Grin's status with the constituted orchestra
will be decided by the transition committe.

The new board chairman, elected at the meeting, is law firm managing
partner Mike McSweeny.  He succeeds Marie Bianco, who has resigned
previously for personal reasons, unrelated to the organization's fiscal
crisis.  Given the resignations by all other board members, McSweeny will
have the authority to reappoint or make new appointments.

The Symphony made a last salary payment of $65,000 to its staff on Monday,
with a notice that they may stay on the job but without any certainty about
compensation.  The musicians' payday on Friday will be their last as well
- a total of $135,000 - and similarly no one is fired or laid off; the
orchestra is on notice that there are no additional funds to pay them in
the future.  Gourley said he is working on arrangements to continue staff
and orchestra health benefits and instrument insurance payments for the
musicians.  The Symphony will contact season subscribers and those who
have purchased single tickets to give them options, although no refunds
are likely in the near future.

The Symphony lost a total of $2.9 million in fiscal 2000 (when the Valley's
dot-com bust only began) and fiscal 2001, which ended last June 30.  The
organization broke even in the first quarter ending Sept.  30, and reduced
the deficit to $2.5 million, but after the Sept.  11 terrorist attacks,
"contributions dried up, we stopped getting pledges and payments on
previous pledges," Gourley said.

Gourley, heading the transition committee, is hoping for the orchestra
surviving, smaller in size, giving fewer concerts ("and more relevant to
the area"), getting continued support from the community, especially if
the technology sector and the economy at large recover fast enough.  "It's
very sad," Gourley said, "especially when we all need music more than ever
before.  But right now, how can you go to a corporation laying off its own
employees to ask for contributions to the Symphony?"

Janos Gereben/SF
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