And three members of the community also made good today on their promise to donate $2.1 million that had been contingent on the musicians’ acceptance of the across-the-board pay cuts.

The cuts were a way of reducing $1 million in debt and avoiding staffing cuts. The $2.1 million donation will enable the symphony to be debt-free for the first time in a decade and to fulfill the terms of the musicians’ contract for this season.

Local 677 of the Musicians Association of Hawai'i did not release the vote count last night, but its membership agreed to a 20 percent pay cut next year along with a pay freeze in the fourth year of the current five-year contract. The new agreement also has a reopener clause for the fifth year, when the two sides will review symphony finances and discuss possible raises.

In addition to the pay cuts, the musicians agreed to a reduction in pension benefits and a shorter season, cut from 34 weeks to 30 weeks. The base pay for a musician is $30,345 for a 34-week session.

Symphony performers said they were not happy with the cutbacks in pay and pension, but the alternatives would have been a reduction in the orchestra by six members or a strike.

The symphony has 63 full-time and 20 part-time musicians.

Administrative and box office staff announced today that they would take similar cuts, including 20 percent salary reductions for symphony president Stephen Bloom, music director Samuel Wong and pops conductor Matt Catingub.

"To have this major sacrifice by everybody is our hope for the future," said Lynne Johnson, chairwoman of the Honolulu Symphony Foundation and one of the donors. Johnson gave $100,000.

"I am really in awe of the musicians being willing to take a further cut so as not to lose positions," she said. "The artistic integrity of the orchestra was of supreme importance to them."

The other donors are Bank of Hawaii president Michael O’Neill and his wife, Trish — they contributed $1 million — and a member of the symphony board who has chosen to remain anonymous, Bloom said today.

The cuts and donations give the symphony a "viable financial plan," Bloom said. But even though that will help ease concerns in the community, the symphony must still convince the public to help build an endowment to keep the institution running, Bloom said.

The endowment currently has $5.5 million but needs two to three times that amount, he said.

"The symphony is demonstrating here on all sides that it can live within its means," he said. "Now we are going to turn to the community to support us."

"Once again the musicians … have stepped up to the plate to help this organization survive," Michael Largarticha, president of Local 677, said in a written statement. "While these cuts will make the lives of our members and their families dramatically more difficult during the next two years, we expect that this sacrifice now will help assure the long-term survival of this relevant 103-year-old institution."

Bloom said the two sides worked hard to come to terms.

"Obviously this is not something that anybody wanted, but it was certainly something that the organization needed to do to come to live within its means," Bloom said. "One of the things that we have worked very hard on in the last couple of years is fostering a good relationship between the musicians and the board and management. In the end it was that relationship and the sharing of information that helped pull this off."

Bloom and the musicians agreed that a smaller orchestra would not be in the best interest of the musicians or the community.

"We did leave it to the negotiating committee of the musicians to decide what was best to present to their membership, and artistic integrity was one of the things that was most important to the musicians, as it is to us," Bloom said.

Symphony musicians representative Scott Janusch, an oboist, said he hoped that the sacrifice by the performers will not go unnoticed.

"It is time for board and management to help stabilize and grow this important community asset once and for all by increasing the endowment, improving fund-raising and increasing the audience," Janusch said. "By ratifying this agreement, we have done our share to see that this becomes a reality."