After a successful inaugural season, the San Antonio Philharmonic orchestra begins its second season Sept. 22 with its first executive director, Roberto Treviño, in place. Hired in June, the architect and former city councilman said he recognizes the Philharmonic’s musicians as inheritors of the 83-year history of the former San Antonio Symphony and feels empowered to realize his vision of building connections with the orchestra’s diverse community.
In late August, he gave the San Antonio Report a tour of the orchestra’s new Westside headquarters in the Promesa building, just across the street from the Jesse Treviño La Veladora tile mural on the side of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center overlooking Guadalupe Street.
Treviño began the tour in the reception area of the new offices, which he said would be used as the orchestra’s box office. Next, he pointed to the conference room, stacked high with hundreds of large green file boxes that hold the entirety of the former San Antonio Symphony’s music library, rescued by an SA Phil donor just as it was about to be auctioned off during the symphony’s bankruptcy proceedings.
“That’s the history right there,” Treviño said of the library, which holds every score and every note taken by San Antonio Symphony conductors and musicians. He also pointed to a painted portrait of San Antonio Symphony founder Max Reiter and said, though Reiter gets the credit, the organization grew out of the efforts of a group of immigrants to San Antonio, calling it “a great immigrant story” and “a great underdog story.”
The San Antonio Report spoke to Treviño about his hopes for the future of the San Antonio Philharmonic. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
San Antonio Report: Though representation of Black, Indigenous and people of color in orchestra administrations throughout the U.S. is improving, a Latino executive director remains rare.
Roberto Treviño: Part of my responsibility is to be a bridge to a newer, broader audience. When people talk about the symphony in the past tense, they talk about how a community like the one we’re in right now didn’t relate. “That’s not for us. That’s for that other group.” I see myself fitting in, in terms of that evolution.
We’re going to grow our audience, and we’re going to grow in a way that reflects our demographics, reflects the people here. We want to be intentional about that, and we’re going to be authentic. I think you can see that in our concert lineup. The artistic committee took that vision and ran with it. We have Ludwig Carrasco coming, he’s a renowned conductor in Mexico City. We can show that we’re very much connected to a lot of that history in Mexico, which is why we’re also doing the Diez y Seis celebration (a concert at Lanier High School on Sept. 15) as part of our announcement into this neighborhood.
The musicians and everyone who I’ve been talking to have been so welcoming and embracing of how we are going to grow our audience and how we can be a part of the community. And certainly, I feel welcome to do what I think is best for this organization.
Former Mayor Henry Cisneros told me himself, that us coming to the West Side was a dream he held since 1981 when he was mayor of San Antonio, of having this orchestra embrace the broader audience playing more music of the Americas, and how that blends into us being a versatile, diverse and dynamic orchestra.
SAR: You have a personal connection to making sure everyone has access to symphonic music.
RT: Growing up, I wanted to play the violin for my school orchestra. I went to Melhart Music Center in McAllen and walked in. I was raised by a single mom, she just wanted to see what the price of that violin was. And she’s like, “Oh, no we’re not.” We walked right out without buying it, and that was the end of that.
To this day, I remember feeling like I’m getting cut out of something that I just can’t even try. And I’ll never know which way I would have gone with that, but I didn’t get to try. Then fast forward later, the school offered drafting classes, which I was told were probably more attainable for me.
I look around this community and I see faces that look like my face when I was a kid. And I just imagine that they might feel the same way I did. If I can connect and inspire somebody, and us as an organization, then we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing.
The most amazing thing about what we do as an organization is most of our concerts are free. All our children’s concerts are free because we know how important this is. These musicians get that, they know that’s our mission.
The Lanier concert is us announcing ourselves in the community and helping to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, with Lanier turning 100 years old on Sept. 13, and we’re playing on the 15th. The symphony has never played at Lanier, this will be the first time ever. But we see this as an annual event.
SAR: Is it a free educational concert for the students?
RT: It’s open to everybody. We believe by doing it at Lanier, we can attract the students and ask them to bring their families and friends.
SAR: How will the new Westside offices work out? Do you have rehearsal space?
RT: The Avenida Guadalupe Association worked with us and we got it done. We’re just thrilled, they’ve been very accommodating. Part of the lease is we’ll have access to the podcast studio in the building, but we also have access to El Progreso Hall. I will say it needs upgrades, but it increases our options as an orchestra. We’re going to do some master classes in there, we’re going to do some other special events. So this is all about being present in the community. It’s all about how you can really invigorate a community.
SAR: Does the Philharmonic want to be a resident company of the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, the status previously given to the San Antonio Symphony and currently enjoyed by the Classical Music Institute orchestra?
RT: We think the Tobin Center is a great place. The building was designed for world-class classical music. We desire to be in a place where it benefits us, where it makes sense. Right now it just simply doesn’t. If we were to play our entire concert series that we just announced, it would be $600,000 more for us to play the Tobin Center than at the First Baptist Church. We’d love to be at the Tobin Center, but there are so many different forces at play.
SAR: One is that the City of San Antonio Department of Arts and Culture considers the San Antonio Philharmonic a new organization, which doesn’t meet its standard of three years in existence before eligibility for funding, and resident status?
RT: Right now, they don’t even consider us an established arts organization. Neither does the City of San Antonio, which, quite frankly, I can’t even understand and is certainly not the way that policy was intended. It’s not being addressed correctly, and I’m sadly disappointed with the Department of Arts and Culture for its lack of leadership.
We can save a significant amount of dollars by having a rehearsal space accessible to us at no additional cost. Not only will we get to rehearse all we want, but we get to save money in the process and be fiscally responsible, which everybody’s asking us to do. We’re doing it, we’re being conscious of our budget, we’re being responsible and planning ahead.
SAR: Arguably, one of your challenges is that you’re now one of two symphony orchestras in the city, the Philharmonic and the Classical Music Institute. Has that conflict resolved?
RT: I reject that. We’re not adversarial. We don’t have a conflict. I do think that there is a difference, and I do think that we are an orchestra with history, and these are local musicians. So I just don’t know where the conflict is. And I don’t even know what the argument is.
SAR: One point of specificity would be the San Antonio Symphony at one time providing music for opera and ballet productions, and now it’s CMI.
RT: But that had nothing to do with us. We offered to play, but the Tobin Center plays a big role there. And I think the bigger question would be who’s controlling that? It had nothing to do with us. Certainly, it’s not that there’s a contention between us and the opera and the ballet. The history has been that we would play for the opera and the ballet, and we’d love to play with them again. But the venue has a huge influence in that situation, and it has nothing to do with what we think of CMI.
SAR: Is San Antonio big enough to support two symphony orchestras?
RT: I think San Antonio is big enough to support the Philharmonic. We’re doing the 10 classic concerts. We’re doing the Diez y Seis concert, the Cinco de Mayo free public outdoor concert earlier this year. We’re going to be part of the Day of the Dead with Johnny Hernandez. We’re going to have a Fiesta event. You know about our Young People’s Concerts. That’s our orchestra playing, multiple examples, at least 30 concerts. Honestly, I don’t know where there’s another example of that. Is there? I’m asking you because if there is, I’d like to see it. I don’t see it. That’s all I’m saying. I just know that there isn’t. It’s a false equivalency.
SAR: What about the annual budget? Where are you now? Where do you hope to be in a year? Where do you hope to be in 10 years?
RT: We have our work cut out for ourselves. We finished the first season in the black. We did that without any city support and with a lot of things lined up against us. And that says a lot. Most importantly, it’s not that any one person wants this to happen. So many people want this to happen, not just the musicians, but the community. We’re banking on that.
The reason we’re in the black is because our venue costs are not as high as they were. We have a collective bargaining agreement with the union musicians, so we’re paying musicians what we negotiated and they think it’s fair. Formerly contract employees, they’re now employees of the San Antonio Philharmonic. We want to take care of the musicians.
The budget should be somewhere between $15 million and $18 million in a city like this. It seems like a lot, but it’s not a lot compared to other communities. We could do a lot with $15 million to $18 million dollars. We’ve done a lot with just a first-year budget of $2.5 million. This year’s budget is $4 million.
We also know that to make this work, we’ve got to be very, very conscientious about our budget, finances, where we are, where we spend our money. Many of us feel like there’s a tipping point coming, that people will see that we’re doing all the things that we should have done a long time ago. I was on the City of San Antonio and Bexar County Symphony Transformation Task Force in 2018, and Michael Kaiser was hired to help get all that done. We’re following that plan, that calls for being out in the community, going to where people are, embracing the cultural diversity that exists here, getting certain people to come and help us and be a part of this. All that’s been happening.
So 10 years from now, I hope that we are an organization that is supported by everyone, but more importantly, one that even corporations see as a strong, smart organization that rebuilt itself with a very strong foundation.
