Australian Festival of Chamber Music: Theodore Kuchar says plan to move to Cairns flawed
The inaugural artistic director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music says Cairns might be beautiful, but it does’t have the goods to support the massive event. Here’s why.
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The Australian Festival of Chamber Music’s inaugural artistic director Theodore Kuchar thought it was a fantasy when he was first heard that Townsville’s signature event was leaving its birthplace after 35 years.
The internationally acclaimed conductor flew into Townsville two weeks ago in his role as the current artistic director of the Great Barrier Reef Orchestra for its performance Shooting for the Stars on Saturday night.
But as soon as he got off the plane his phone was running hot with callers telling him about the AFCM’s move to Cairns.
Despite early reservations the news was later confirmed in an email from the AFCM’s board chair Mary Jo Capps and in a call from the AFCM’s executive director Ricardo Peach whom Kuchar said told him the festival’s annual audience survey’s showed everyone was happy with the festival except that Townsville was gradually losing its attraction as the host city year by year.
Other reasons given were that despite a record breaking season last year, Cairns offered better infrastructure, civic support and international access.
“How can you say that Townsville can’t support the festival when for 35 years you’re boasting to all of your subscribers that you’ve never had such high numbers, you’ve never had such ticket sales, you’ve never generated sponsorship, and you’re telling me something very different?
“I said, ‘get out of here’.”
For Kuchar who was the festival’s artistic director for 17 years, the event is synonymous with Townsville and often referred to overseas as the ‘Townsville Chamber Music Festival’.
“The (Townsville) city council, the city, the people who have not only supported the festival by going there, but have invested their money.
“They put the festival in their wills when they died, because of the importance it played to Townsville, the city which made their businesses thrive, that gave them the life it did.
“Those people would be turning in their graves right now.” he said.
Kuchar, who founded the festival with the vision of James Cook University Vice Chancellor Ray Golding in 1991, said from day one Cairns had been considered as a potential alternative location for the festival and in the initial three years several AFCM concerts were performed in the northern city.
“We always repeated several concerts in Cairns, and we tried different venues to see if one was going to attract more than another.
“This (festival) was an unknown commodity in Cairns to present an international level of serious music. So we were trying different things.
“What was clear that, although there were the loyal people who came to whatever we did, the audiences were never much more than 50 to 75 people. It was a very select minority.”
After the trialling several concerts from the festival in Cairns the early years Kuchar said the Vice Chancellor convinced him the festival’s home was Townsville.
“He said ‘we’re going to keep it here. It’s not going anywhere. That doesn’t mean we can’t do the occasional concert in Cairns, but we’ve seen Cairns cannot support what we’re doing, and there’s no justification for it.
“We conceived this festival in Townsville. It’s achieved its initial successes in Townsville. It will only remain in Townsville,” Kuchar said the Vice Chancellor told him.
“I have almost no emotion regarding to this (decision to relocate). And you know why?
“The only thing the festival as it takes place today, has in common with the festival that started 34 years ago is the name,” Kuchar said.
But Kuchar is philosophical about the festival’s relocation to Cairns and what did not work in the city 30 years ago could work now.
“It is what it is. Vice Chancellors at universities change, mayors of city councils change and principal conductors of orchestras change. It’s a part of the evolution of any successful organisation.
“I wish them luck. I don’t like to see anything fail. What I don’t exactly understand, is I how they plan to move it all to Cairns next year, but they want to keep their administrative existence in Townsville.
“The success of any performing arts organisation, whether it be a 52 week a year symphony orchestra, opera house, theatre company or modern dance company, is based on a presence in the community and a loyalty.
But while wanting the festival to find success in Cairns the artistic director also offered advice.
“Of course I wanted it to succeed. But I would suggest, and this is the voice of experience. If you want to succeed in Cairns, if you want to achieve the same stability and loyalty that the festival had here, you have to base yourself there.
“If you don’t care and you’re just giving it a try and thinking you can come back to Townsville after three years. It’s not so easy.
“Maybe what’s happened in Townsville, the most unlikely of locations, if it worked in Townsville and it became an international institution in Townsville, Imagine the potential in Cairns.
“I’m very positive when I say that Cairns is a beautiful place. I love Cairns. If it succeeds, as it did in Townsville, it has every possibility in the world to succeed in Cairns.
“But it takes a commitment. It has to be run by people who have a presence there throughout the year. Because I tell you, the easiest part of running a festival, or an event, is the event itself.
“The difficulty is the infrastructure, finding the money, finding the support, knowing that everything is going to work.
“I finally could begin to relax (as festival artistic director) when I went to the airport to pick up those musicians that were finally arriving here.
“The difficulty is putting that all together. It’s the 50 weeks surrounding preceding the two week event. You have to be here enough to develop a loyalty and a following.
“This festival doesn’t belong to the small administration.
“It belongs to the many, many people who support it. That doesn’t mean you have to be a concert goer to be supportive of such an event, but you have to show that you’re as much part of the community that you expect to support what you will be doing.”
“If you make such a major decision after 35 years, you can only do so with an uncompromised belief that it’s going to be a success.
“You cannot go if you’re only 99% sure. You have to be at least 100%
“You have to go to the new place with the unhinged commitment that this is the future. This is where we want to do it and you have to make people there believe it twice as much as you because everybody is naturally suspicious.
“The human nature is naturally suspicious, especially if something which has existed so successfully down the street, people will be very cautious.
“That’s why, if you come in with anything less than an absolute commitment, it’s already a recipe for disaster,” he said.
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Originally published as Australian Festival of Chamber Music: Theodore Kuchar says plan to move to Cairns flawed
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