Category: News Briefs

In today’s (2/4) Edmonton Journal (Alberta, Canada), Nick Lees writes, “Saxophonist P.J. Perry donated his time and played cool tunes most of the night. A couple of music lovers paid $3,000 and $2,500 respectively to play the Winspear’s 6,551-pipe Davis Concert Organ. And trumpet player Bill Dimmer, a Civil Air Search and Rescue training officer, donated a flight over Edmonton that sold for $475. ‘We were delighted our first Flavours of B.C.’s Naramata Bench fundraiser raised about $50,000,’ said Lori Pratt, [development manager] of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. ‘Ticket sales account for 40 per cent of our budget annually, but we must raise $1.8 million through sponsors, corporate donations and fundraising.’ Ten Naramata wineries offered to pour wines at the fundraiser Friday night, held at the Winspear, and some 35 of their autographed bottles sold for $2,500. A dinner with Mayor Stephen Mandel at Jack’s Grill sold for the same figure. ESO music director Bill Eddins conducted bidding on the floor and helped fetch $3,000 for a custom-made Sam Abouhassan suit.”

In Tuesday’s (2/3) Shreveport Times (Louisiana), Donecia Pea reports, “Officials have pulled the plug on the remainder of the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra’s 2008-2009 Willis Knighton Master Series, ‘Bringing Music to Life.’ The cancellation finishes a season of no shows as both the symphony board and its musicians continue to be gridlocked in contract negotiations. ‘The federal mediator is still involved, but the parties have reached no agreement and have been at a stalemate,’ said board attorney and spokesman Bobby Gilliam. The board stated in a recent letter to its patrons that this season’s canceled series does not signify the end of the 61-year-old organization. … However, with both parties at an impasse, the future of the symphony remains unclear. ‘It’s just a case-by-case situation,’ Gilliam said.”

In Tuesday’s (2/3) Washington Post, Jacqueline Trescott writes that “After a string of successes rescuing arts groups from near-death, [Michael M.] Kaiser is now enlisting Kennedy Center managers to help nonprofit arts organizations that are reeling from the recession. ‘Arts in Crisis: A Kennedy Center Initiative’ was announced this morning. Essentially, the program is a high-tech support service through which arts administrators can talk to the center’s personnel about shrinking income, budget-conscious audiences and other difficulties in keeping the doors open. … Any arts organization that is nonprofit—which usually covers orchestras, dance troupes and theaters—can sign up for free assistance from the Kennedy Center, which has built a reservoir of information about how groups have managed their successes and failures through a half-dozen programs over the past eight years. … The Kennedy Center’s program received $500,000 mainly from two individuals: board member Helen Lee Henderson and Adrienne Arsht, a Miami businesswoman and philanthropist. … ‘Arts in Crisis’ has a Web site where organizations can register: http://www.artsincrisis.org. Assistance will be provided through e-mails, telephone calls, Web chats or site visits.”

“In 1997, Anthony Davis was in the audience when the Lyric Opera of Chicago gave the world premiere of Amistad, his ambitious opera based on the 1839 Amistad Rebellion onboard a Spanish slave ship,” writes George Varga in Sunday’s (2/1) San Diego Union-Tribune. “Next Saturday and Sunday, Davis will be in the audience at UCSD’s Mandeville Auditorium when the La Jolla Symphony performs the world premiere of his genre-leaping Amistad Symphony, a 30-minute suite that draws from—and expands upon—the music in his award-winning opera. ‘I’ve had pieces of the opera done separately by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, but I never put it completely together as a suite,’ said Davis, an internationally acclaimed composer and pianist who has taught at UCSD since 1998. … Amistad Symphony will be performed Saturday at 8 p.m. and next Sunday at 3 p.m. at Mandeville Auditorium. Both concerts by the La Jolla Symphony will also feature Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait (which will be narrated by recently retired UCSD provost Cecil Lytle), Rick Snow’s Darwin Portrait and Ottorino Resphigi’s The Pines of Rome. The concerts are designed to celebrate the 200th birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.”

In Tuesday’s (2/3) Charleston City Paper (South Carolina), Lindsay Koob writes, “The news is just out today: the Charleston Symphony has proposed slashing next year’s budget by $500,000—from $2.9 to $2.4 million. Some board members reportedly wanted to cut deeper than that.” Koob speculates that the number of core musicians could be reduced from 46 and wonders about other changes including soloists, staff, venues, and educational offerings. “What won’t suffer, according to the CSO’s powers-that-be, will be the CSO’s vaunted quality and reputation. We’re talking bare survival, folks—and the CSO (and Charleston Stage & Ballet Theatre) are far from the only American artistic entities that teeter on the brink of collapse in these desperate times.” In a Friday (1/31) press release however, the CSO reported that, having received a $75,000 challenge grant in December for gifts of $1,000 or more, “as of January 31, 2009, the organization received a total of $177,410.78 in gifts of $1,000 or more exceeding the $75,000 challenge match goal by over $100,000.” Successfully meeting the challenge allowed the organization “as of January 31, 2009, the organization received a total of $177,410.78 in gifts of $1,000 or more exceeding the $75,000 challenge match goal by over $100,000.”

In today’s (2/4) Portland Press Herald (Maine), Bob Keyes reports that “the Portland Symphony Orchestra today announced that it is cutting jobs, reducing salaries and artist fees, canceling performances and trimming educational programs in an attempt to fill a $220,000 budget deficit for the fiscal year that ends July 31. In addition, the orchestra is examining all aspects of its operation in an effort to reduce expenses to avoid future deficits, said Executive Director Ari Solotoff. … Cost-saving measures announced today include canceling the 2009 Independence Pops concerts, which are scheduled each summer around the Fourth of July; reducing administrative costs by eliminating two full-time positions and cutting the pay of senior staffers by 10 percent; and eliminating two spring youth concerts and scrapping a side-by-side youth program, in which student musicians performed alongside PSO musicians. The orchestra also will adjust the makeup of its concert programming in the spring, so it can perform music that requires fewer musicians, Solotoff said.”

Tuesday (2/3) on MusicalAmerica.com, Susan Elliott reports, “French conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier is to succeed John Neschling as music director of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP). He begins next month. In June, Neschling announced his intent to step down at the expiration of his contract, in 2010, having been in the job since 1997 and having transformed the orchestra from one of uneven quality to an important international touring, recording and performing ensemble. But Neschling was fired prematurely last week via e-mail by Fernando Hernique Cardosa, the ex-president of Brazil and head of the foundation that administers the orchestra. Tension between Cardosa and Neschling over the choice of the latter’s successor had been mounting for months, and came to a head Dec. 9 when Neschling charged he had been completely excluded from the hiring process. Cardosa then declared that this was affecting the musicians and that he had no choice but to remove Neschling before the end of his contract.” Tortelier will lead eight programs in São Paulo in 2009 and twelve in 2010.

In Monday’s (2/3) Cincinnati Enquirer, Janelle Gelfand reports, “Musicians in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra have agreed to an unprecedented 11 percent pay cut for two years. The orchestra’s administration is hoping that a new financial plan, including the concessions made by its 92 musicians in a contract ratified Monday in Music Hall, will result in a savings of $2.8 million in operating costs. In addition to the concessions in the union contract, the administrative staff has taken pay cuts, and music director Paavo Järvi, in his eighth season, has agreed to a salary reduction. … The musicians’ contract will save the organization $1.8 million per year, or 15 percent of orchestra costs, but it will result in no reduction in symphony or Pops concerts at Music Hall. However, the symphony and Pops’ recordings for Telarc, critically acclaimed for more than three decades, will end—at least for now. … In addition to four staff positions eliminated in September, the orchestra has just eliminated two fulltime and two part-time positions, and has ‘substantially restructured’ five others, [President Trey] Devey says.”

In Tuesday’s (2/3) 77 Square, a culture and entertainment weekly in Madison, Wisconsin, Lindsay Christians reports, “The Madison Symphony Orchestra voted Monday night to join the American Federation of Musicians Local 166. The vote was 43-36 in favor of joining the AFM, ending several decades of negotiating independently within the orchestra, which had its own union. The orchestra is 83 years old. Symphony Executive Director Richard Mackie said he does not anticipate this move changing the way the symphony bargains with musicians. The current contract is set to expire on June 30. ‘We have always collectively bargained,’ Mackie said. ‘Local orchestras with unions have usually relied on locals to negotiate their working conditions, since they know it best among local musicians.’ … The local chapter of the American Federation of Musicians includes concert bands, small ensembles and individual musicians in many genres, from chamber music to jazz to swing.”

Photo credit: Jaime Young