
Cristian Măcelaru leads the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in a recent concert. Măcelaru becomes the orchestra’s music director in 2025. Photo by Diania Maria Lara/Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
In Thursday’s (10/10) Cincinnati Business Courier, Nikki Kingery writes, “The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has received a $10 million endowment pledge from a Cincinnati couple to support the organization’s innovation efforts. The CSO announced Thursday, Oct. 10, that Dianne Rosenberg, chair of the orchestra’s board of directors since 2022, and her husband, J. David Rosenberg, pledged the $10 million gift to fund the orchestra’s artistic and educational initiatives toward broadening community engagement…. The Dianne and J. David Rosenberg Innovation Fund will help the CSO in its ongoing research into making the orchestra more relevant to young audiences. It will also continue the development of educational experiences as well as new programs that reinvent the traditional concert experience…. The fund will allow for new commissions, recordings and experimental concerts such as the CSO Proof series, which includes a nonmusical element that ties into the orchestral performance … Simon Woods, president and CEO of the League of American Orchestras, [said] the CSO has been ‘exemplary’ in its approach toward engaging new audiences. ‘What they’ve done that’s so brilliant in Proof is they’ve broken down genre barriers,’ Woods said. ‘They’ve really worked very hard to break across racial and demographic barriers to make it appeal to the broadest cross section of people.’ ”