The British artistic agency Askonas Holt, which notably manages the careers of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Simon Rattle, Rafael Payare and Bernard Labadie, was absorbed last weekend by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, thus joining an alliance including the American agency Opus 3 and the phonographic publisher Pentatone.
Where will the San Francisco Conservatory stop now and what is the real strategic plan that underlies the network that is being formed under the first incredulous and then questioning eyes of the classical music industry? The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) announced on Friday the acquisition of London-based arts management company Askonas Holt. The press release issued by the SFCM tells us that “the idea of developing this alliance was born from the management of Opus 3 and turned into a common vision”. Both companies will report to Donagh Collins, Managing Director of Askonas Holt, with the goal of “advancing the cause of music at the highest level around the world”.
150 years of history
New York and London are the major places that concentrated the major global artistic agencies. In New York, Columbia Artists closed its doors in August 2020, and the SFCM came, in October 2020, to the rescue of the other great American flagship and liner, Opus 3.
The London market is dominated by Askonas Holt and HarrisonParrott, great “trend setters”. We owe in particular to Askonas Holt the launch of the wave of “young conductors” which marked the decade of the 2000s. Askonas Holt, whose history dates back to 1876, has a portfolio of more than 300 conductors, instrumentalists, famous singers and directors, including Simon Rattle, Joyce DiDonato, Yannick Nézet-Séguin or András Schiff. Askonas Holt is also a leader in organizing international tours for orchestras. Here, the careers of Rafael Payare, Bernard Labadie, Jonathan Cohen, Alexander Shelley, but also singers Frédéric Antoun, Étienne Dupuis, Simone McIntosh or Rufus Wainwright are managed by Askonas Holt.
The larger of the two edges
The duty had looked into the ambitions of the SFCM in September in an article entitled “The mini-revolution of the San Francisco Conservatory “. “You have no idea what’s for sale! said David Stull, president of the SFCM, who is becoming by leaps and bounds the most powerful man on the musical planet since all the units of the alliance report to him and his board of directors.
Artist agencies are an easy target to develop an empire on the ruins of the pandemic, because they have been the great victims. We had analyzed the phenomenon as early as June 2020: increasing work (reorganizing all calendars), galloping fixed costs (salaries, rents), and almost zero financial income hit them hard.
The consensus at the time was that this crisis sounded the death knell for large agencies in favor of more flexible “boutique agencies”, managing a few artists. But it is the exact opposite that is happening here: after the bankruptcy of some (Hazard Chase in England, Columbia Artists Management in New York), the consolidation of the biggest in North America and the biggest in Europe is done under under the aegis of SFCM, creating a mega-agency within an alliance with the common mission “to increase the impact of music in the world and change the nature of the interaction between students, artists, customers, staff and patrons, while continuing to operate independently”.
However, no more than in the Opus 3 acquisition process, the nature and identity of the donors who “push the wheel” and allow these acquisitions are known. Asked by The duty on this subject in September, David Stull had kicked in touch: “The donors involved are multiple. They don’t want to hide. The reason for their anonymity is that they want the focus to be on the ideas and where this is all going. »
San Francisco, the master city overseeing Silicon Valley, has many ambitions. It is beginning to be of global public interest to know who is hiding behind these grand maneuvers and, beyond the beautiful professions of faith, for what purposes.