In Thursday’s (12/10) Cincinnati Enquirer, Janelle Gelfand writes, “A deep love of classical music prompted arts patron and philanthropist Louise Nippert to announce a gift of $85 million on Thursday to preserve music at the highest possible quality in Greater Cincinnati. The Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund will help maintain the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as a major, full-time professional orchestra. It also will allow Cincinnati Opera to continue a 90-year collaboration with the Cincinnati Symphony in its pit, and allow dancers to pirouette to live music at Cincinnati Ballet well into the future. It is the largest single gift by an individual to a Cincinnati arts organization and one of the two or three largest ever to a U.S. symphony orchestra. … A classically trained singer who was a soloist in Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with the Cincinnati Symphony in 1957, Nippert has shunned the limelight as a philanthropist. … The fund will be held by the Greenacres Foundation, which the Nipperts founded in 1988 to convert their Indian Hill homestead into an education center. The Cincinnati Symphony will receive about $3 million in annual operating support, or 75 percent of the fund’s distributions. Cincinnati Opera will receive about a half million dollars annually, or about 12 percent, and Cincinnati Ballet will received $200,000 annually, or 5 percent. The funding for the opera and ballet companies is dedicated to their maintaining the CSO as their resident orchestra.”
Photo of Paavo Järvi leading the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra by Mark Lyons
Posted December 11, 2009
