In Sunday’s (10/13) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Elizabeth Bloom writes, “The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has just unpacked from its most recent European festivals tour, and it won’t hit the international road again until 2016” for a European tour. “In past years, the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance has even piggybacked on tours, marketing Western Pennsylvania to foreign companies, in a collaboration apparently unique to Pittsburgh.… In the meantime, the PSO will stay local. It will play at the Spring for Music festival at Carnegie Hall in New York in May 2014, and … at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the 2014-15 year.… The decision not to tour reflects an interest in buckling down on the PSO’s budget. If the PSO balances its books by 2015 and then does so for three consecutive years, it becomes eligible for several million dollars in grants from the Heinz Endowments and the Simmons Family Foundation,” which could be partly used toward a tour to China, “a popular destination in recent years” for American orchestras, according to Jesse Rosen, the president and CEO of the League of American Orchestras. The PSO’s last China visit, to Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan, took place in 2009.
Posted October 15, 2013
