Also from
The Economist was tucked away
this story about America's professional orchestras. The story details the problems at the highly-regarded Minnesota Orchestra:
Thanks to the recession, ticket sales and donations have fallen about
10% over the past six years. So far, the shortfall has been covered by
withdrawals from the orchestra’s endowment. This, combined with poor
investment returns over the past few years, has produced a sizeable gap
between what the orchestra’s board was expecting to have when it agreed
to the last round of contracts with musicians in 2007, and what it
actually has in hand today.
And points out that this is hardly limited to Minnesota:
Many other orchestras, including those of Philadelphia, Chicago,
Indianapolis, Atlanta, St Paul, Detroit, Spokane and Richmond, have also
endured contentious pay disputes and even strikes. Drew McManus, an
arts consultant, believes this is because the sagging economy “uncovered
institutional problems more than anything else”. According to him,
musicians in certain orchestras are being forced to pay for managers’
past mistakes, including aggressive empire-building and insufficient
provision for bad times.
Truthfully, as these things go, I've always been puzzled by the continued existence, let alone success, of regional symphonies. Saying this as someone from Cincinnati, who went fairly frequently to its symphony orchestra and enjoyed it, it always struck me as funny that for an orchestra with a not-so-very large natural audience, it still somehow managed to be ranked in the
top 20 for highest pay.
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