Arthur Albert

To the editor,

An open letter to the Board of Directors of the New Hampshire Music Festival:

The New Hampshire Music Festival is facing a crisis unparalleled in its 57 year history.

Relations between the management of the Festival and the orchestra players are at an all time low and the musical prospects for future seasons are problematic. Many long time benefactors and patrons are sufficiently disgruntled that they are choosing to withhold future season ticket purchases and donations.

Plans have been proposed to relocate the Festival from Silver Hall in Plymouth to a new concert hall in Center Harbor that must be designed, funded and built by the opening of the 2011 season. Under the management’s stated plan, the orchestra as we know it, will cease to exist by the 2010 season. It is the announced intention of David Graham and Henry Fogel, to replace a substantial number of veteran players with student musicians.

Paul Polivnick had been the music director of the Festival and the orchestra’s conductor for the past 17 years. His contract was to run through the end of the 2009 season; last winter he was informed that his services would no longer be needed after the first 2009 concert. The remaining five orchestral concerts were to be led by guest conductors. They are strictly guest conductors. They are not auditioning. The Festival is being diverted in an entirely new musical direction without a musical director and without input from the orchestra players.

The situation in which you, as a board member find yourself, is best understood by way of an analogy. Suppose you were a board member of a for-profit corporation that has had a long (57 year) history of producing and selling to a niche market. Your customers have always been loyal and quite happy with your product and service. Labor relations have been ideal. The workers have been enthusiastic contributors to the success of the company. Many have served for nearly 40 years.

One day, your CEO announces that there are clouds on the horizon. Sales are declining for your company and for the rest of the industry. To remedy this situation, he hires a highly paid director of product development (who has no formal R&D training). In short order the new director of PD announces that your company’s product line is not good enough. Shortly thereafter, the two of them present the following plan to the board:

1. Your product line is to be radically redesigned.

2. The existing manufacturing facility is to be replaced by a newly constructed state of the art facility in a new city.

3. The company’s operations manager is to be fired along with a significant fraction of the work force. The latter are to be replaced with apprentices. (This is the brainchild of the product development director. He admits that it is an experiment, but he is confident that it will help the company run lean and mean.)

4. There will be no operations manager for the foreseeable future. His duties will be assumed by the director of product development (who is not an engineer).

5. The surviving veteran workers will be required to train the apprentices (in addition to their normal workload).

6. The loss of customer resulting from relocation and change of product will be more than offset by the efficiency of the new facility and superior nature of the new product line. Moreover, new customers will be attracted once they notice the utopian mentor-student composition of your company’s work force.

When asked by the board to give more details about the plan, the CEO explains that it came to him as a vision in a dream. When pressed further, he admits that details are lacking, but that the board should have faith in him, based on his track record to date. When asked how this will affect the financial condition of your company, the CEO assures the board that there will be a hugely successful IPO, which he confident that the board will enthusiastically subscribe to.

As a board member, you have a fiducial duty to represent the best interest of existing stockholders. The CEO is proposing a large number of simultaneous changes in the nature of the company’s operation. Although you are protected from stockholder lawsuits by director’s insurance, you still are bound to exercise due diligence. That being said, would you rubber stamp these proposals without asking lots of questions and getting input that was independent of the CEO’s “vision”?.

Arthur Albert

Campton