Monday’s (1/2) Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) includes a letter to the editor from Richard van Kleeck, a former director of programming at the Kentucky Center for the Arts, about the ongoing efforts of the Louisville Orchestra management and musicians to reach a contract agreement: “Louisville does deserve a high-quality ensemble that it can rally around and proudly call its own. I believe this requires a new beginning, new thinking, new administrators, and new players. A good new strategy would be to emulate alternative ways of formulating/running an orchestra. A combination of the best aspects of these three outstanding American orchestras comes to mind as a proactive way out of the woods.” Van Kleeck’s three examples are the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the New Century Chamber Orchestra. “By reducing from 55 players to chamber orchestra size, between 24 and 28 players, this new orchestra would be able to offer players much better wage guarantees, which would attract stellar players from afar…. Leave the past behind, but also never forget the good things that the Louisville Orchestra once accomplished.” Van Kleeck is director of concert activities at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music and director of Pick-Staiger Concert Hall at Northwestern.
Posted January 6, 2012
