Janelle McCoy, executive director of the Oregon Bach Festival at the University of Oregon, “is to be laid off and her job eliminated at the end of this summer’s fest, it was announced Friday afternoon,” writes Bob Keefer in Friday’s (6/21) Eugene Weekly (OR). “The announcement, emailed to UO faculty and signed by Sabrina Madison-Cannon, the dean of the School of Music and Dance, says McCoy’s job, with its $170,000 annual salary, is to be cut in order for OBF to meet a $250,000 budget cut imposed by the university. In 2017 McCoy led the move to fire OBF Artistic Director Matthew Halls … who had been brought in to succeed founding Artistic Director Helmuth Rilling…. This year’s festival opens for a three-week run June 28 and runs through July 13.” The article includes text of the dean’s Friday email, which notes that the budget cut is “part of a campus-wide initiative to trim $12 million in total university costs…. I carefully weighed our options, and ultimately arrived at the conclusion that this was a necessary step in order for us to preserve as many critical OBF staff positions as possible and ensure the festival’s ongoing success.”
Posted June 24, 2019
