Temp: 31 °F
Monday, April 9, 2001
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By ROBERT BAXTER
and ALAN GUENTHER
Courier-Post Staff
Second of a three-part series
Nothing shows the imbalance in arts funding between North and South Jersey more starkly than the contrast between the performing arts centers in Newark and Camden.
Step inside the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. The walls are paneled in mahogany. Copper railings gleam along the sweeping tiers of red seats. A $250,000 globe chandelier bathes the auditorium in soft light.
In Camden, there's no chandelier at the South Jersey Performing Arts Center. In fact, there's no ceiling - only the bare steel girders holding aloft a metal roof that used to leak when it rained. There's no carpeting - only a bare concrete floor and plastic seats.
In a two-month investigation, the Courier-Post found that the New Jersey State Council on the Arts has consistently shortchanged South Jersey arts groups while steering extra money to North Jersey organizations. The council, for example, continues to lavish money on the performing arts center in Newark, but refused this year to fund the South Jersey center.
Since the two centers opened, the arts council has awarded $12 to the NJPAC for every dollar it has given to the SJPAC, a Courier-Post analysis showed. This year, while the council increased its grant to the NJPAC by $300,000 to $1.5 million, it gave no money to the SJPAC.
The council also spends more money on six prestigious North Jersey arts groups than it awards to 38 cultural organizations in South Jersey, the newspaper found.
At the same time, the council provides meager or no support for community-based groups in Camden County and the seven other counties in South Jersey.
While Newark enjoys a state-of-the-art facility for concerts by the New Jersey Symphony, subscribers to the Haddonfield Symphony rebelled against attending concerts in the SJPAC, which is part of the E-Centre on the Camden Waterfront, because of its poor acoustics and Spartan ambience.
The loud beat of falling rain drowned out the Haddonfield Symphony's performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony during a thunderstorm four years ago. Money ran out before an acoustic ceiling could be installed.
"The SJPAC is terrible. It's a struggle to perform there,"
says Dorothy Rivers, the Haddonfield Symphony's executive
director. "It's a decent place to see a rock concert - not
a symphony concert."
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While patrons at the $187 million Newark arts center dine at a sushi bar, visitors to the SJPAC can choose between hot dogs and nachos. Wine and champagne are served in stemware at the Newark center. Beer is dispensed in plastic cups at the $21 million center in Camden.
When the Haddonfield Symphony inaugurated the SJPAC five years ago, Rivers was horrified to see waiters bringing plates of tacos into the hall for patrons to eat while Itzhak Perlman was playing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.
But more than high-quality food was lacking at the SJPAC. Money also was in short supply.
By the time the NJPAC opened in 1998, President Lawrence Goldman and his professional staff had been at work eight years, putting in place all the programs the SJPAC was unable to duplicate. Goldman is paid $241,863 with additional deferred compensation and benefits payments totaling $113,423. He has a staff of 114, plus 32 part-time employees.
SJPAC Executive Director Barbara Fenhagen, who is paid $65, 000, arrived in Camden barely a month before the center's opening night in 1996. To pay her salary, the center's board took out a bank loan. For several years, Fenhagen managed the center with a part-time assistant and volunteers from her board. Today, the SJPAC has two full- time employees and five part-timers.
The Newark arts center was fully funded for its inaugural season before opening night. This year, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center received $1.5 million from the arts council. The Legislature also pays an additional $5.5 million a year to retire the NJPAC's capital debt.
Five years after it opened, the Camden arts center finally obtained enough money to present its first full season this year, with no financial help from the arts council. To underwrite the season, the Legislature appropriated $750, 000 directly to the SJPAC, bypassing the arts council.
The two arts centers have had a widely divergent impact on the regions they serve.
In Newark, the NJPAC provides a handsome setting for concerts by the New Jersey Symphony and celebrity artists like James Galway and Wynton Marsalis.
Several South Jersey arts groups that tried to perform regularly at the SJPAC - like the Haddonfield Symphony and Jubilate Deo Chorale & Orchestra - have left, complaining about the conditions.
"It's a mess," exclaims Rivers of the Haddonfield Symphony. Rivers and her board backed the SJPAC from the beginning of the project in the 1980s. They saw a new concert hall as crucial for an emerging orchestra forced to play its concerts in high school auditoriums.
In her office, Rivers still has the architectural plans for a concert hall with all the traditional amenities.
But that hall was never built.
Instead, the SJPAC was folded into the open-air E-Centre at the urging of the state agencies and legislators who provided the money. As a result, the SJPAC schedules performances only after the open-air rock concert hall is enclosed for the fall and winter season.
Together, the Newark-based New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and New Jersey Performing Arts Center consume more than $3 million from the council's $18.85 million grants budget.
In contrast, 38 arts groups in South Jersey receive less than $4 million in council funding. Last year, the council rejected the applications of 11 South Jersey cultural institutions, including the SJPAC.
"A host of (South Jersey) arts groups aren't getting the funding they deserve," says state Sen. John Matheussen, R- Gloucester. Matheussen says he believes the state's major arts institutions deserve funding but not at the expense of smaller arts groups in the south.
"There are arts groups in South Jersey who deserve their fair share of funding and they aren't getting it."
The contrast between arts council support for the major urban centers in North and South Jersey is stark.
No expense was spared on Newark's $187 million performing arts center. Encouraged by three New Jersey governors, the arts council, the Legislature, the state Economic Development Authority and major corporations pooled resources to build the center overlooking Theater Square and the Passaic River.
From inside the towering brick and glass center, the lobby' s spacious windows provide a sweeping view of the Newark skyline, including the headquarters of the NJPAC's major corporate supporters - Prudential Insurance Co. of America, Public Service Electric & Gas Co. and Verizon.
From the center's upper levels, rows of faux boxes faced with pear wood curve around the lobby, carpeted with a handsome African textile design. Patrons can dine in The Theater Square Grill or enjoy refreshments at one of several bars. At gala events, donors enjoy catered meals or attend intermission receptions in the handsome Chase Room. The elegant rest rooms feature gleaming tiled walls accented with colorful mosaics.
Imposing doors, faced with pear and cherry wood, lead to the interior of the 2,750-seat Prudential Hall, named after the center's major donor. The auditorium is dominated by three sweeping tiers of seats under the chandelier that rises up to the ceiling at performance time.
Last year, the NJPAC presented 371 performances that drew 550,000 visitors. Major stars like soprano Jessye Norman, the Chieftains, and conductor Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony appear there with ticket prices ranging from $14 to $68.
In contrast, the SJPAC drew 42,000 people with 16 performances last season. The Camden arts center this year offers 30 performances of family fare such as the Russian American Children's Circus, Gaelic Storm and the Nuclear Whales Saxophone Orchestra. Ticket prices range from $10 to $25.
The South Jersey Performing Arts Center, like the NJPAC, was intended to provide a handsome home not just for touring shows, but for the region's arts groups as well.
"This was always supposed to be a beautiful place with plush seats and carpeting," notes Sandra Haughton, artistic director of the SJPAC. That's not quite how the center turned out.
"We were promised a concrete roof and a beautiful hall with tasteful appointments," recalls Rivers of the Haddonfield Symphony. "One by one, they knocked things out. We ended up with a hall for rock concerts."
The SJPAC's problem is that after money ran out, it became part of the E-Centre, renamed the Tweeter Center last week. The outdoor concert hall has become an acclaimed venue for rock and popular music concerts. Enclosed during the fall and winter for the SJPAC, it retains the character of an outdoor entertainment center.
Fenhagen, SJPAC's executive director, acknowledges the center's shortcomings, but says her facility can still be an attractive venue for family arts events and popular entertainment.
"The center is still problematic for (symphony) concerts, but those issues could be addressed by additional capital funding," she says.
The New Jersey Symphony has taken advantage of its new home in Newark. "A performing arts center creates a sense of occasion," explains Lawrence Tamburri, the symphony's executive director. "The NJPAC has created a place where people want to go. The acoustics are state of the art."
The symphony now performs more than 40 times each season in the NJPAC - more than triple the number of concerts it previously performed in Newark. Season subscriptions have quadrupled.
"It's great to have a real concert hall, a place to call our very own home," says Jim Meglia, a percussionist in the symphony. "It's fabulous to have an audience that responds to the hall and the orchestra."
The Haddonfield Symphony's musicians tell a different tale about performing in the SJPAC. The troubled acoustics make it difficult for musicians on one side of the stage to hear those on the other side.
"There are several good things about the SJPAC," says Kathryn Elkin, 23, an oboist with the Haddonfield Symphony. "There are plenty of seats. It's close to Philadelphia. But it's like playing in a huge barn. You're swallowed up."
The New Jersey Symphony prides itself as "the only statewide orchestra" in the United States. But its only performance in South Jersey is an annual Fourth of July concert at Fort Dix in northern Burlington County.
Tamburri wants the New Jersey Symphony to perform more frequently in South Jersey but complains there are no suitable venues. Without the support of local music lovers, he says, it is "financially too risky."
As recently as 1996, the symphony received $3 million from the Legislature to retire accumulated debt. In the past 20 years, the arts council has poured $28.5 million into the New Jersey Symphony.
In contrast, the Haddonfield Symphony has received only $ 1.25 million in support from the arts council over the same period.
Since the early 1980s, the New Jersey Symphony has refused to play in the school auditoriums that provide the concert venues for the Haddonfield Symphony and other South Jersey orchestras.
Tamburri says he has visited the SJPAC and was not impressed.
Neither was Rivers. She says her Haddonfield Symphony's attempt to take its concerts to the SJPAC was "frustrating and discouraging."
In the past decade, the Haddonfield Symphony has gained national recognition. Its ranks are filled with students from Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music and New York City's Juilliard School of Music who go on to positions with orchestras across the country.
Conductors also have launched major careers with the help of the Haddonfield Symphony. The symphony's former music director, Alan Gilbert, conducts the world's leading orchestras and is music director of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic in Sweden. His successor, Daniel Hege, left Haddonfield last season to become the music director of the Syracuse Symphony.
Rossen Milanov was appointed Hege's successor last spring. Within weeks, Milanov also was named the assistant conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
The Haddonfield Symphony also has developed educational programs that serve as a model for other orchestras across the country. But its efforts to expand concerts and raise additional funds have been stymied by the lack of a concert hall.
After the symphony's subscribers rebelled over the poor acoustics and lack of amenities at the SJPAC, Rivers and her board reluctantly decided two years ago not to perform any more subscription concerts there. Today, the symphony performs only children's programs there and special events like last May's Millennium Concert. This season, the symphony's subscription concerts are being performed in Haddonfield Memorial High School's auditorium, the Voorhees Schools Theater and at Rowan University.
The Haddonfield Symphony was banking on the SJPAC to produce the same results - more concerts, larger audiences and increased corporate funding - the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra enjoyed after moving to the NJPAC.
Rivers says the Haddonfield Symphony suffered a setback as soon as it began playing concerts at the SJPAC.
"This hall dragged us down. We lost subscribers. Our ticket sales slumped. Our subscribers complained the acoustics were horrendous."
The Haddonfield Symphony now is courting major corporations and foundations to fund its plans for expansion.
Unlike the New Jersey Symphony, which can invite major donors for a glamorous night out at the NJPAC, Rivers entertains donors and corporate guests in board members' homes or in the open-air courtyard of Haddonfield Memorial High School before concerts.
"We're ready to take off," says Rivers, describing the Haddonfield Symphony's growing national reputation. "But we need a new concert hall to grow and develop."