The Tucson Symphony Orchestra has severed ties with its longtime volunteer and fundraising partners, the Tucson Symphony Women's Association, ending a 50-plus-year affiliation.
The TSO's governing arm, the Tucson Symphony Society board, announced the action July 25 and said the association would have to remove "Tucson Symphony" from its name. The group was in court early this week filing a name change, said association President Evelyn Gerzetic. She would not disclose the new name but said the group's initials will remain the same.
"We've been divorced," a disappointed Gerzetic said on Tuesday.
Just how the association and the TSO became so at odds is up for debate, but it appears to have been initiated earlier this year by the committee that coordinates the symphony's annual Tucson Symphony Cotillion. That committee, which worked with both the orchestra and the association, approached the symphony board and asked that it be allowed to host this November's cotillion ball independent of the women's group.
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The cotillion is one of the association's largest fundraising events; last year, the association donated $39,000 of the proceeds, which totaled about $109,000, to the TSO. The remaining money is used to pay for expenses and bank reserves for the following year's event, Gerzetic said.
The cotillion committee said it will operate on a similar formula, donating $1,000 per girl who participates in the ball, and using the remaining proceeds to pay expenses, said Julie Beach, who represents the TSO on the cotillion board.
The Tucson Symphony Women's Association also sponsors orchestra concerts and has been the driving financial and volunteer force behind the orchestra's Young Artists Competition and Celebrate the Future concerts. Both those events have new sponsors, TSO spokesman Terry Marshall said.
"We always intended to do Celebrate the Future," Gerzetic said. "We had always done it. . . . We founded Young Artists. Gosh. I appointed people to that. It came as a complete shock to us (that the association would no longer do it). We just assumed we were doing those things."
But it is the group's activities outside raising money for the orchestra that didn't sit well with the TSO board. The orchestra board claims the association changed its focus away from raising money for the orchestra and more to its own fundraising efforts to support its music education programs, including providing lessons to gifted and disadvantaged children, mostly from the South Side.
Gerzetic said the group has been providing music lessons since 1982 "and the symphony has known about it."
"Over the years, we have never, ever given them all our money," Gerzetic noted. "In the 1970s we bought an entire block Downtown. Three historic buildings. We housed the TSO in them for years. We ran an antique business in one. Our organization has always come first, then the TSO."
She said the association's goals have remained consistent throughout its 54 years, to promote music in the desert, with a focus on music education for the underprivileged. The group views its music education program as a way to grow new audiences by turning youngsters on to music early.
"While the symphony respects the (association's) decision, their programs are not consistent with the symphony's educational mission to provide school-based music education, to expose children of all ages to orchestral and chamber ensemble performances, and to provide adults with educational opportunities built around the concert programming of the TSO," orchestra officials said in a written release.
Beach said the 50th cotillion ball on Nov. 23 is shaping up. To learn more or get involved, call Beach at 297-5415.
