The Score | Musicians Helping Musicians

This spring, musicians from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra performed together at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, led by DSO Music Director Fabio Luisi, who was the Met’s principal conductor from 2011 to 2017. The concert featured 100 musicians—50 from each orchestra—in Mahler’s First Symphony, for a reduced audience of 400 people, and the event benefited the MET Orchestra Musicians Fund and the DFW Musicians COVID-19 Relief Fund. It was the first time many of the Met musicians had the opportunity to perform for a live audience since the COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020. While in Dallas, visiting musicians also worked with the DSO’s Young Strings music education program in masterclasses and workshops. In the Dallas Morning News, DSO President and CEO Kim Noltemy said the concert came together in “a mere five days.” The DSO offered the concert online for free for two weeks on its NextStage portal and also issued limited-edition NFTs of the concert with unlockable exclusive, behind-the-scenes footage to raise additional funds for the MET Musicians Fund and the DFW Musicians COVID relief Fund.