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Leuven, 16 May 2009
Dear friends,
I’m starting this newsletter on 24 April at 2:35 in the afternoon, just 25 minutes before the subsidy committee’s pronouncement is due to be placed on the Belgian government’s Arts and Heritage website. Sigiswald, Marleen, Geert Robberechts and Pieter Hulst are in Lyon with La Petite Bande for a concert of Bach cantatas.
Barbara, our new accountant, and I are at work in the office, each with an eye trained on the website. (There’s already a glass of wine for each of us in the kitchen: either we will have a reason to celebrate or we’ll need consolation.)
For a few months now, with a bit more anxiety and nervousness each day, we’ve been here at the office carrying on as normally as possible, but Sigiswald and Marleen have been doing the same at rehearsals and concerts.
Every time we’re reminded of what’s hanging over our heads, our breaths catch and our hearts beat a little faster …
What’s happened so far :
2 February 2009
Sigiswald is awarded the Prize for Cultural Merit, a prestigious award for years of innovation and serious research, in Hasselt by the minister of culture Bert Anciaux.
3 February 2009
The advisory committee gives La Petite Bande a fully negative assessment as a preliminary recommendation to the subsidy committee.
What now? We try to stay calm above all, and not get angry or let ourselves be carried away by our emotions.
The press and other media are quickly informed of this remarkable situation, where just one day after such a reward one can get a negative assessment
Sigiswald, nearly dead from exhaustion, goes from interview to interview, teaches in between them and prepares for the next productions and CD recordings. (The Haydn production starts in 3 days! And then we still have the St. Matthew Passion and Bach Cantatas.)
Thanks to a gorgeous recital by Stephan Genz and Veronica Kuijken, Sigiswald’s 65th birthday can still really be celebrated on 16 February.
But an objection has to be drawn up as quickly as possible, as we only have 10 days.
The board of La Petite Bande has already been informed.
They call an emergency meeting and go over the choices of words, which have to be correct, accurate and persuasive but not aggressive.
In the meantime, two of Sigiswald’s students have gone into action with youthful enthusiasm: Neepa Acharya puts a message on facebook and in no time she has reached a huge number of people, who express their sympathy and support.
But not all our concert-lovers are on facebook, so Esther Visser sets up a website on which is a petition asking minister Anciaux not to follow the preliminary recommendation and to continue subsidising La Petite Bande.
And this reaches our audience. The first hours and days, thanks to the efforts of musicians, students, organisers and most of all our audience, we watch the number of signatures grow and grow. Ultimately more than 20,000 people from all over the whole world sign it.
It gives us an incredible amount of support and courage.
The next few productions are very successful – perhaps because of the special aura of doubt and hope. The musicians play with an even greater devotion to their leader, and the applause from audiences in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Italy expresses their sincere appreciation and cordial sympathy: it seems as though they want to clap away the negative outcome.
In the meantime, it’s 3 in the afternoon and a message has appeared on the Arts and Heritage site that the results cannot yet be shown. We can expect them in the course of the afternoon. Barbara and I leave the office, promising to keep each other apprised.
And then… at 5, while I’m visiting the Arts and Heritage site again, Barbara rings: everything is fine, we’ll still be getting subsidies! Geert reads the good news on his laptop in his Lyon hotel and the first journalists promptly ring up.
The world can know: Sigiswald and La Petite Bande can continue to make music!
In Lyon there’s a little party after the concert to celebrate.
Below is the message of thanks sent by Sigiswald to the petition signers who had asked to be kept informed about the outcome:
A message from Sigiswald Kuijken, artistic director of La Petite Bande
Dear Sir/Madam,
Dear La Petite Bande sympathiser,
Rejoice with me: today I am able to inform you that on 24 April, Belgium’s minister of Culture Bert Anciaux awarded an annual subsidy of € 590,000 to La Petite Bande for the next three years (2010 to 2012). The extremely negative and tendentious preliminary advice the Artistic Evaluation Committee gave him in early February thus missed its intended goal: La Petite Bande’s survival is no longer threatened, for the time being, thanks to this ministerial decision.
There is no doubt that your explicit appreciation and support – and that of so many others with and through you – via the ‘savelapetitebande’ petition made a huge contribution to the minister’s favourable decision. Your sympathy and unanimity had already filled my heart with gratitude, and now they’ve even produced tangible results! I feel very lucky to have this harmonious, organic exchange of energies.
I was also happy that many of you clearly made it known that excellence in culture is close to your hearts. It was thus very significant and beneficent that your call for respectful conservation of our communal heritage sounded so loudly at this opportunity.
However, even after this subsidy redistribution, the financial future of La Petite Bande can be called anything but secure:
From 2003 through 2009, La Petite Bande has applied for a yearly subsidy of € 700,000 to carry out its planned artistic projects; the effective subsidy during all these years amounted to € 600,000 per year (increased by a slight adjustment to the index). Now that its annual subsidy has fallen to € 590,000, this € 100,000 annual shortfall will amount to € 110,000 per year. In 2009 alone, this recurrent budget deficit has already resulted in having to cancel two planned Haydn CD recordings: the ‘Paukenmesse’ and a recording of three concerti which was to finish an already-begun project. There are other plans underway for the future, which assume considerable budgetary reserves (such as the research and staging of a Neapolitan ‘intermezzo’ by J.A. Hasse). The continuation of our highly successful Bach Cantata series for ACCENT is also an operation which absolutely must not be shelved.
It is clearly necessary that we create ADDITIONAL RESERVES in order to avoid cutting any more projects and to get through our artistic agenda.
Encouraged and inspired by the overwhelming international response to the on-line petition ‘savelapetitebande.com’, on 6 April 2009, after due consideration, we decided to start a foundation. The new Foundation ‘SUPPORT LA PETITE BANDE’ has its office at Vital Decosterstraat 72, B-3000 Leuven. Through the foundation we can develop a way to be less dependent on increasingly uncertain government subsidies, and to be able to handle any financial shortfalls without having to compromise our artistic objectives.
A great many people, like you, have subtly sensed what is important to La Petite Bande in its work; accordingly, we hope that we can count on such kindred spirits as you for some devoted support.
I wish to continue steering my independent course with La Petite Bande in the music world – indeed, for me it’s not about ‘surviving’ by adopting a more ‘commercial’ mentality. On the contrary: any support given to La Petite Bande is totally disinterested and above all reveals the particular human and artistic like-mindedness of the supporter, who recognises him- or herself in the essence of the Petite-Bande way of thinking.
Thus, I am frankly and explicitly appealing to your willingness to support us financially in this context through the Foundation “SUPPORT LA PETITE BANDE”. This support could be a substantial one-time donation, or it could follow a more sustainable formula, which we would work out together (a tax deduction is currently not an option; obviously, publication of names of benefactors is possible).
As a sign of gratitude for your support, I’d like to offer you the opportunity to meet with me (and the musicians) personally at events organised especially for you.
All donors are welcome at the first of these events, a concert of Bach cantatas on Sunday 6 September 2009 in the lovely Gothic church of St. Martin in Kortrijk (Belgium). On the day before (Saturday 5 September), I’ll give one or more detailed introductions to the programme, with an opportunity for dialogue (possibly in Dutch, French, English or German!).
Hoping for your generous reaction on this request, I’ld like to give you the bank-account number for the new Foundation “Support La Petite Bande“:
IBAN: BE76 7350 2267 9695 BIC: KREDBEBB
Please bear in mind that we need to cover every year the sum of € 110 000.
For more information or to communicate about this new initiative, you can always write to the sender of this e-mail (that is, the webmaster, easily reached using the ‘reply’ key: he collects everything and passes it on).
In the name of what binds us in deep artistic experience, I send my most cordial good wishes; I gratefully look forward to getting to know you better.
Sigiswald Kuijken
Sigiswald would also like to use this newsletter to address you somewhat more personally, and I’d like to wish you all a great summer. As usual, the calendar is attached
Sincerely,
Helene Jacobs
Dear friends,
For the time being, we are no longer on the immediately threatened species list, thanks to the favourable decision by Minister Anciaux – for the next three years, the immediate pressure is off.
However, it’s clear that we have to be alert and enterprising if we want to think in the long term. This is why we decided to set up the foundation ‘Support La Petite Bande’.
A lot can happen in three years: it is impossible to anticipate what will remain of the present arts policy. We must prepare for changing new mechanisms and altered structures – we cannot simply assume that things which have taken years to develop and maintain will survive. Classical music has been under heavy pressure for a long time: if you believe the media you may wonder if it’s even still alive …
The consequences of the cutting back in cultural and spiritual areas of education that began a few decades ago, combined with the immense power of the trendy commercialisation of culture, are becoming more and more apparent: we are experiencing a tragic, improbable bleakness in the general cultural landscape; and it is placing a heavy burden on the spiritual lives of future generations.
It is all the more necessary, therefore, that as many initiatives as possible remain that seek to connect with the source, and that we not be willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater …and in so many diverse areas! Music has the power par excellence to show us the path to inner happiness.
We aim to continue our work with the same intensity, and we realize just how absolutely essential additional support above the subsidies granted to us will be necessary for the future. We would like to appear on stage with larger forces at least a few times a year, as we used to do regularly (classical symphonies, concertante opera performances, etc.).
In that perspective, we are daring to ask you all to support us by donating generously to the foundation ‘Support La Petite Bande’. Your money will not go up in (crisis or otherwise) smoke, but will be converted to real assets, audible sound!
Please know that Marleen and I greatly appreciate your financial support, in any amount, and will accept it with gratitude.
Cordially,
Sigiswald
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