K-W Symphony hires new director, vows to pay down deficit

After a year without an executive director, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony has hired Andrew Bennett for the job.

Bennett will have his hands full -  the organization has racked up a $934,856 deficit with a nearly $400,000 deficit last year alone. 

But Bennett said he's confident he can turn things around. 

"Now is the moment to say we're not just a very good symphony orchestra which we are, but we're one which is doing things slightly differently, raising a few eye brows along the way, I hope, and showing that orchestras are not a fixed organization," said Bennett.   

The symphony has also put in place a salary freeze for staff and negotiated with its musicians to pay salary increases over two years instead of one.

Catherine Copp, the orchestra's board director, said the symphony needs to focus on generating new revenue in order to stay in business. 

"The Canada Arts Council has a threshold that they look at, at about 20 per cent, where they start to make sure the organization is working well. So we're actually under their threshold but we're getting darn close." 

According to Copp, the total deficit is currently 18 per cent of the organization's revenue. If they were to hit 20 per cent, the CAC would then investigate the organization's viability. 

In past years the orchestra would generate revenue from private, hired performances in Waterloo Region and other nearby cities like Toronto, but Copp said those opportunities are declining.

"We've done a lot of that in the past, it's been very successful and we were kind of expecting that to continue but the trending in the market seems to be different so that's where we lost revenue that we thought was going to be coming in this year," said Copp. 

Despite those losses, Copp said ticket sales and subscriptions remain strong for the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. In the last four years subscriptions have increased by 16 per cent and single ticket sales are up four per cent.