“Nearly a year after her death, Anne Melvin has given the Columbus Symphony Orchestra a gift that will help ensure the group’s long-term stability,” writes Ken Gordon in Thursday’s (12/7) Columbus Dispatch (Ohio). “Melvin, who died in December 2016, had donated millions of dollars to the symphony during the course of her life. In August, as her estate was being settled, Melvin’s daughter, Anne T. Melvin, called symphony officials and told them they were going to receive $8 million…. It is the largest single gift in the symphony’s history…. ‘The Columbus Symphony was one of the great loves of my mother’s life; music was part and parcel of who she was,’ Anne T. Melvin said in a statement.” Denise Rehg, the orchestra’s executive director, pointed out that “the greater significance of the gift is that it allows the symphony to jump-start a fledgling endowment that it initiated last year. Melvin’s donation will be added to $4.8 million either already raised or pledged to bring the total to $12.8 million. The goal, Rehg said, is to increase that to $25 million ‘in the short term’ and $50 million eventually…. The symphony runs on an annual budget of about $8 million.”
Posted December 8, 2017
Pictured: The Columbus Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Rossen Milanov
