The Nashville Symphony's $10 million budget deficit is the latest chapter in a yearslong struggle to keep one of Music City's most prominent cultural institutions financially sustainable.
The nonprofit has routinely spent more than it reported in annual revenue for much of the past decade, according to a Tennessean review of IRS filings, a pattern that began years before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The financial reckoning comes as the Symphony has suspended its 2026-27 season effective Oct. 18 and furloughed roughly half its staff and all 77 members of the orchestra. Its board of directors approved a restructuring plan to address the $10 million deficit in the organization's current operating budget.
Then a day later, the Symphony announced that Mark
Cantrell had stepped down as president and CEO. The board of directors appointed Mark Tillinger, a former board member, to replace Cantrell, who took the leadership roles in August.
IRS filings compiled by ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer show expenses exceeded revenue each year from 2014 through 2019, including an $8 million gap in fiscal 2016. After reporting positive results in 2021 and 2022, the Symphony again reported expenses exceeding revenue for the next three years.
In its most recent filing, covering the fiscal year ending July 2025, the Symphony reported $28.1 million in revenue and $30.4 million in expenses, for a $2.3 million shortfall. That followed a $626,000 shortfall in 2024 and $7.1 million in 2023.
Nearly half of the Symphony's revenue in 2025, about $13.9 million, came from contributions. Ticket sales, performances and other program services generated about $9.6 million.
Financial problems stretched back years
The current crisis also comes weeks after the death of billionaire philanthropist Martha Ingram, the Symphony's longtime benefactor who helped keep the organization afloat through previous financial troubles.
In 2013, the Symphony came within days of losing its Schermerhorn Symphony Center to foreclosure after struggling with debt incurred to build the $123.5 million concert hall.
The Symphony financed construction with a $102 million bond issue and still owed $83.5 million when lenders moved to foreclose. A last-minute restructuring, aided by Ingram, eliminated the existing bank loans and left the Symphony with a $20 million mortgage held by an Ingram-owned real estate company.
The deal kept the Schermerhorn from going to auction.
More than a decade later, the Symphony still owed the entire $20 million principal and had fallen behind on interest payments, accumulating $1.625 million in unpaid interest by July 2025, according to its most recent financial audit.
The lender agreed multiple times to hold off on exercising its rights over the defaults while the Symphony attempted to stabilize its finances.
By September 2025, the Symphony said it expected it would be unable to make any of its next four quarterly interest payments through June 2026.
Executive compensation
The Nashville Symphony paid its two top leaders more than $1 million combined in fiscal year 2025, though their compensation was generally in line with leaders at similarly sized orchestras.
Then-Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero received about $616,000 in total compensation in fiscal 2025, while then-President and CEO Alan Valentine received about $418,000.
Overall, the Symphony reported $1.75 million in executive compensation and another $12.7 million in salaries and wages that year.
The Houston Symphony, which operates on a budget similar to Nashville's, paid its music director about $668,000 and its CEO about $471,000. The Kansas City Symphony, which reported about $27 million in annual expenses compared with Nashville's $30 million, paid its CEO about $414,000.
Pay varies considerably across the industry. At the much larger Los Angeles Philharmonic, which reported more than $221 million in annual expenses, then-Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel received about $3.8 million in total compensation and its CEO received more than $630,000.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville Symphony crisis follows years of losses, documents show
