“As arts organizations across the country cut costs and trim their schedules, Washington is getting a new orchestra,” writes Anne Midgette in Thursday’s (3/5) Washington Post. “The D.C. Philharmonic held a news conference yesterday to announce its maiden concerts April 9-10 at the Music Center at Strathmore—an ambitious program of Michael Torke’s ‘Bright Blue Music,’ Samuel Barber’s ‘Knoxville: Summer of 1915’ and Gustav Mahler’s towering Second, or ‘Resurrection,’ Symphony. Denyce Graves and Harolyn Blackwell are the featured soloists. And according to John Baltimore—the 30-year-old conductor who in a mere few months has brought this fledgling organization to life—the ensemble will represent a new model for orchestras, funding itself by turning to a market he describes as ‘untapped.’ ” Baltimore says he believes “wholeheartedly that Washington in particular has this unique demographic of educated, upper-class, recession-proof government wage-earners that, if this music was marketed to them and they could see that this music is for them, they would be supportive of it.” Among the ranks of the new orchestra are musicians from the National and Baltimore symphony orchestras.
Posted March 5, 2009
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