In Sunday’s (3/22) Dallas Morning News, Scott Olster of the Columbia News Service writes, “Out of work residents of Rochester, N.Y., may have trouble making ends meet, but they won’t need to give up their season tickets to their hometown orchestra, even if they can’t cover the tab for the next season. The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra is offering to hold the seats of unemployed Rochester-area season subscribers until Sept. 15. If subscribers are still unemployed by that date, the orchestra will give them free subscriptions for the 2009-2010 season. The move is an attempt by the orchestra to sustain its subscriber base of 8,000. It is just one way orchestras around the country are trying to stay afloat in hard times. … ‘Everyone has adjustments to make,’ said Judith Kurnick, vice president of strategic communications at the League of American Orchestras.” The Albuquerque-based New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, for example, is substituting Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana for Mahler’s Second Symphony, “Resurrection,” which requires a much larger ensemble. “Orchestras are, on the whole, highly resilient performing arts groups, Kurnick said. ‘Fewer than 10 orchestras in the last 50 years have not reopened in some other form,’ Kurnick said. ‘Whatever happens, we recognize that there is a desire to have an orchestra.’ ”
Posted March 23, 2009
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