League of American Orchestras
The firm was engaged by the American Symphony Orchestra League to undertake a comprehensive study of financial trends in the symphony orchestra industry. Using extensive data collected over a 25-year period by the League, the consultant team produced an analysis called “The Financial Condition of Symphony Orchestras” that identified alarming but by now familiar trends of rising costs, increasing deficits, and far too much product for the available audience. The so-called “Wolf Report” was controversial and became the subject of many heated debates about the health of the industry. It spurred the publication the following year of the book “Americanizing the American Orchestra” on which the firm also collaborated. That book was intended to suggest solutions to the problems of the orchestra field that had been raised in the Wolf Report. Despite many attempts in subsequent years to discredit the Wolf Report (and especially its gloomy prognosis for the future), no one has ever seriously challenged the findings or the research itself.
Consultants: Dr. Thomas Wolf, Jane Couch
Year Complete: 1993