The Philly Pops is shutting down, leaders say

In a major blow to Philadelphia’s arts scene, leaders of the Philly Pops say they will dissolve the organization, leaving the city without a stand-alone pops orchestra and the Kimmel Center with one fewer resident company.

Facing mounting vendor debt and depressed ticket sales since the pandemic shutdown ended, the group has decided to fold, says longtime pops president Frank Giordano.

“Things have evolved. The Pops used to have subscriptions that were in the ascendancy, and now subscriptions are down,” said Giordano. “I’m told it’s this way nationally, that these people are just not coming back period.”

The music won’t end immediately. Programs already announced for this season will go on with the existing Pops ensemble performing under the auspices of the recently merged Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center Inc. Each planned program this season will be produced, though likely with fewer repeats.

“It may be an abbreviation, where some shows we do two concerts instead of three,” said Giordano. “We’re looking at the economics right now. But the main concern is to address our audience and artist obligations.”

The terms of the Philly Pops’ contract with its musicians, which expired in August, will be honored for the remaining concerts, he said, and staff will be kept through the end of the season.

After that, the ensemble and organization behind it will disappear.

“We are not planning to file any kind of chapter,” said Giordano, referring to sections of the bankruptcy code, “but will deal with our obligations and then just close it down.”

“This will make Philadelphia a less vibrant city than we have been for decades,” said Patricia Wilson Aden, president, and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, of the pops’ impending shutdown. “This is the kind of repercussion we feared in a post-pandemic Philadelphia.”

Local arts and culture organizations aren’t expecting a return to normal attendance levels until 2023, “and that’s at the earliest,” she said. “These organizations have been holding on by their fingernails for a long, long time.”

The Philly Pops has amassed a debt of $450,000 to the Kimmel, its major landlord, and about $500,000 to other vendors, said Giordano. That’s on a $7 million annual budget.

Those numbers aren’t crushing, but Giordano says that the group decided against a Chapter 11 Reorganization that would have kept the group alive.

“We didn’t think that would be the best alternative. It’s been a struggle, and the board felt the best way was to take this alliance,” he said, referring to the orchestra/Kimmel presenting the pops’ concerts this season.

Beyond this summer, though, it’s not yet clear what kinds of pops offerings will continue in the city.

The disappearance of Philly Pops erodes the ability of local freelance musicians to earn a living. The ensemble typically presents about 40 concerts each season, and many instrumentalists stitch together careers through work with the Pops, Opera Philadelphia, Philadelphia Ballet, and Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and by teaching.

“It’s devastating,” said Ellen Trainer, president of Local 77 of the American Federation of Musicians. “It’s a roster of 61 musicians, and it’s a big part of their schedule, their livelihood, that’s fallen by the wayside.”

Founded in 1979 by Philadelphia impresario Moe Septee, the Philly Pops for decades revolved around the personality of pianist and conductor Peter Nero. After a bitter split from Nero in 2013, the group went through a series of music directors. It grew its education programs, took on a jazz band, and developed distinct lines of programming intended to address a changing demographic as its core of traditional listeners aged out.

It launched a partnership with the Met Philadelphia on North Broad Street and, most recently, entered talks with the Uptown Theater to present some concerts there.

“We have an evolving audience since the pandemic and haven’t been able to evolve fast enough,” said Giordano.

The Philly Pops fills a unique niche in the city. Its free outdoor Independence Day concerts of patriotic music on Independence Mall are much-loved, and the ensemble regularly fetes veterans and frontline workers. The Pops’ varied repertoire has become sharper recently, with shows broken down into distinct genres — jazz, big band, the American Songbook, rock, Motown, and Broadway — capitalizing on nostalgia.

Its long-running Christmas show has been a cultural umbrella where you could hear the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas Gospel Choir belting out gospel or Nero stringing together a Hanukkah medley laced with classical references.

The days of showing up to Verizon Hall and experiencing that level of surprise and free-wheeling adventure may be over, though it seems likely that pops programming of some kind will continue in the city.

“My hope and plan is that we find a way to present pops programming in the future,” said Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center president and CEO Matías Tarnopolsky. “We’ll work on a vision for the future in the weeks and months ahead.”

The orchestra/Kimmel could choose to present outside pops groups, start a new local pops orchestra, or shift the Philadelphia Orchestra’s programming mix more heavily into other pops genres — something that’s been happening in recent years anyway.

This season the Philadelphia Orchestra is performing in live-to-screen presentations of Home Alone, The Muppet Christmas Carol in Concert, and Black Panther. Earlier this month they performed a concert with the lounge band Pink Martini in which the ensemble could just as easily have been the Philly Pops.

The Pops is not alone in experiencing sagging attendance this season. A number of groups, including the orchestra and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society cite poor attendance.

Giordano says it was after this season’s opening Moody Blues show that he concluded that he could not continue with business as usual.

The program sold only half of its available tickets, and, taking into account no-shows, listeners filled Verizon Hall over three nights to an average of only 35% of capacity. This, in the Pops’ second season back with a full schedule since the start of the pandemic.

“I was expecting to do, I don’t know, $375,000, and we did $195,000 in gross sales,” said Giordano. “It became very apparent to me that we needed to find another way.”