Taxpayer-backed Orchestra London paid $50,000 for a major Canadian rock musician to play a solo show at a private insurance conference in a downtown hotel in 2012, documents obtained by The Free Press show.

Joe Swan, then its executive director and a city councillor, indicated in an interview the show was an unorthodox but successful effort to increase the orchestra’s revenue.

But for some it might raise questions about how the organization handled finances in the years leading up to its financial demise last month.

“We were looking for alternative revenue streams,” Swan said. “(The client) paid all of the costs. They paid 100%.”

Swan said he doesn’t think the contract between the orchestra and the client, the Ontario Insurance Adjusters Association, should be made public. “It’s a private matter,” he said.

The head of that association also cited privacy and would not reveal how much it paid the Orchestra.

With the orchestra in turmoil after Swan’s resignation and a likely bankruptcy, The Free Press hasn’t seen the financial records to show how and when the organization was paid for its work booking the Delta Armouries rock show in May 2012.

But a contract shows Orchestra London paid $50,000 for the rock star to perform a “private show” at the insurance conference. Orchestra musicians weren’t involved.

While Orchestra London’s musicians are distancing themselves from the organization, they’re still working together as the Musicians of Orchestra London, led in part by veteran musician Joe Lanza.

Their work together “keeping the music alive” is his focus, Lanza said Tuesday, not what Joe Swan did a couple of years ago.

“It sounds curious, but I’m not going to speculate on what it’s all about,” he said.

The $50,000 contract, signed by Swan on Oct. 20, 2011, also includes the name Cory Legue, who was a fellow Orchestra London employee.

Contacted for comment, Legue described the rock show as “a pilot program” to see if new ways of creating revenue — such as using the orchestra’s entertainment contacts to book their local shows — were viable.

“Joe (Swan) thought it was outside-the-box thinking,” Legue said. “The orchestra made some money on it. Off the top of my head, I couldn’t tell you (how much). A few thousand.”

Both Legue and Swan say the rock show was OK’d by the orchestra’s board, who as volunteers oversaw the organization, which at the time was getting $500,000 a year from city hall.

Ailene Wittstein, who around that time had stepped down as the board’s president but was still a member, said “I really do not know anything about it.”

A separate Free Press source, who reviewed board meeting minutes from 2011 and 2012, said: “There’s no record of the board discussing this . . . there’s nothing there.”

After not replying to Free Press questions about the orchestra for a few weeks, Swan phoned the newsroom after learning Wittstein had indicated she couldn’t recall being aware of the business deal he arranged using the orchestra’s bank account.

Swan insists she knew.

“She was told,” he said.

He says he wanted new sources of revenue for the orchestra by creating a related business in which he had some experience, hooking up performers with organizations that wanted a show.

Those organizations would pay all the costs and give something extra to the orchestra for arranging it, either as an extra payment, a donation or a gift-in-kind, Swan said.

Money collected by Orchestra London would be used later to pay for the event, but the orchestra couldn’t lose because it wouldn’t commit more than it had received, Swan said.

Swan said his board knew of and agreed to his plan, that he specifically discussed it with the president and the head of the finance committee.

Swan says the plan was tried just once, for the rock show. He says he told the board not to try it again because it would be unwise for the publicly funded orchestra to compete with private concert promoters.

“We rely on corporate donations,” Swan said. “We should not compete with the private sector.”

Orchestra board president Joe O’Neill, who joined the organization in late 2012 and wasn’t around when the rock concert was booked, said he wasn’t in a position to comment on the concert.

“I cannot speculate on events that took place before this time,” O’Neill wrote in an e-mail. “During my tenure on the board, there have been no events of this nature.”

Legue, the orchestra employee whose name appears on the rock show contract, says he and Swan at least discussed starting their own private company to book entertainment acts.

Legue, who left the orchestra for another job not long after the rock concert, says the private concert-promotion business never really got off the ground and “in no way” was involved in the concert.

“You’re looking for a scandal that’s not there,” he said.