Don’t think the Minnesota Orchestra down for the count. They maybe locked out but they haven’t been knocked out!
While the orchestra’s lock out continues, the musicians banded together last week to hold their own “season opener” at the Minneapolis Convention Center, following the example set by Indianpolis and Atlanta. And the audience that night, numbering over two thousand souls, were there with both an “agenda and appreciation for classical music.”
This was to have been the opening night of the Minnesota Orchestra’s 110th season (including all those years as the Minneapolis Symphony, going back to 1903). However, musicians have been locked out since Oct. 1, and the first six weeks of the season have been canceled after the union’s contract expired and negotiations to achieve a new deal failed.
So the players, as did locked-out musicians in Indianapolis and Atlanta this fall, took matters into their own hands. They pooled their own resources and significant gifts from donors and rented the convention center auditorium for a program led by Conductor Laureate Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, who noted that this was his 53rd season with the orchestra. They also had a little help from their friends. Members of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra stepped in to fill spots left open because Minnesota players have taken temporary gigs in other cities.
Michael Henson, the orchestra’s president and CEO, said in a statement Thursday that he appreciates the musicians’ desire to perform, “but this doesn’t alter where our negotiations stand or the fiscal realities we face.” Management has said it must cut expenses because of budget deficits, and has proposed salary cuts of at least 30 percent.
The turnout Thursday was similar in size to a typical Minnesota Orchestra crowd. Patrons rose enthusiastically to applaud the musicians, some of whom were visibly moved, when they took the stage. The audience again stood for Skrowaczewski, who quickly launched the band into his arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Many were longtime fans of the orchestra. Others were driven by their support of the musicians and the sense that this was a historic night.
Read the full story – Locked-out Minnesota Orchestra musicians put on their own show
Also check out the following related story and audio excerpt below from Minnesota Public Radio – Locked-out MN Orchestra musicians hold ‘season-opener’ concert tonight
Other stories from the classical music world:
- The San Francisco Symphony (SFS) gains a replacement conductor for this week’s set of concerts: Israeli-born Asher Fisch who is currently Principal Guest Conductor of the Seattle Opera.
- Baltimore appears to be the next staging ground for a revolution… a classical revolution that is. In the latest update of what’s been happening with Classical Revolution, local ensembles on the Baltimore scene are taking traditional music into non-traditional spaces.
- Chinese pianist and star Lang Lang is “one of the few classical musicians whose fame has burst the bounds of the classical music world.” He musical travels have taken him from Carnegie Hall and the White House to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the Nobel Prize awards in Stockholm. Earlier this year he performed all five of the Beethoven piano concertos in four days. In this short interview Lang Lang shares his thoughts on performing concertos with orchestras all over the world.
- Pianist Garrick Ohlsson, who was mentioned in October’s first Monday Bow, recently shone again with the San Diego Symphony… closely following Lang Lang!
Finally, last week the news publication Newsweek made a shocking announcement: it would end its print edition and shift exclusively to digital in 2013. In “celebration” (for lack of a better word), we got to see recap of ten classical superstars that it has covered since its founding in 1933.
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