Change and consultation basis of RTE's music plan

A radical management restructuring and a series of public consultation meetings form the main thrust of changes in RTE's music division. Details were announced yesterday by the station's director of music, Mr Niall Doyle.

The head of orchestras and performing groups post, recently vacated by Mr Simon Taylor, has been abolished. In its place will be a new senior tier of general managers, one each for the National Symphony and RTE Concert Orchestras, and one for communications and marketing.

Later appointments will add support staff for each of the new positions, and deal with the other performing groups.

There will also be a new management arm to cover education and community work, and audience development.

In the past, Mr Doyle said, planning had been both highly centralised and physically remote from the centres of music-making. The old structure, he said, "wasn't capable of driving forward in any ambitious way", and it was "a miracle things kept going the way they were set up".

Too much expertise had been demanded of a very small number of people. His changes would bring improvements in music and artistic planning, in delivery and service to the public, and in support for the performing groups.

The public strand of what he described as the widest music-related consultation exercise in the State will take place in April. There will be public consultations in Waterford, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Dublin and Sligo between April 12th and 21st, and 2,000 individuals and groups in the music and arts communities are being written to with requests for submissions.

An eight-page 25-point written submission form has been prepared to deal with artistic and access issues, as well as individuals' own concerns. The process will be heavily promoted. He expects to have a new policy in place by autumn.

The new direction will not be established in time to affect next season's NSO programming. The NSO, he said, is "a big ship, with a large turning circle". Changes will not take effect until the season beginning in 2000.

The basic concept of the Explorer Series - the free concerts of contemporary music, which have attracted a new and younger audience to the National Concert Hall since January - is to be retained and developed. The restoration of a September start to the NSO's season is being considered, with the possibility of exchange visits from British orchestras during the period when the NSO is playing at the Wexford Festival.

He confirmed the RTE Concert Orchestra is being considered as an orchestra-in-residence for the 1,200-seater venue being planned for the DCU campus in north Dublin, and described this as a tremendous opportunity to develop new audiences even beyond Dublin, in Meath. Such a development, he said, "has the potential to greatly energise the concert scene here."