“Attendance reached a 20-year high last season for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, which also reported Tuesday a 15 percent increase in donations and a balanced budget for fiscal 2014. The year, which ended June 30, covered the SPCO’s first full year back after a lockout-shortened 2013,” writes Kristin Tillotson in Tuesday’s (12/9) Star Tribune (Minneapolis). “Orchestra President Bruce Coppock said the year’s financial results exceeded expectations.… Expenses for the year were $9.8 million, down from $11 million in 2012, the most recent comparable year in which a full concert schedule was performed…. Concert halls were on average more than 90 percent full last season. Individual giving to the SPCO’s Annual Fund grew by 19 percent, with institutional donations going up by 9 percent. Coppock said ‘there is no question’ that the increases in concert attendance, subscription renewals and donations have been influenced by interest in several high-profile artistic partners,” including violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, pianist Jeremy Denk, and clarinetist Martin Fröst. The SPCO’s press release announcing its fiscal results notes the orchestra “has no external debt or unfunded liabilities” and takes “no more than a 5 percent draw on the endowment’s three-year trailing average fair value.”
Posted December 10, 2014
Pictured: Patricia Kopatchinskaja performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in D minor with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra at Wooddale Church, November 2014
