Update on Minnesota: Good Questions; No Answers

The lock-out situation in Minnesota is extremely bitter ... with some insiders believing that the Board's plan is to abolish the resident orchestra and continue to bring in guest pops orchestras, which they are currently doing to fill out the season.  The players are holding their own holiday concerts which, by all accounts, are sold out.

Minnesota Public Radio reports today that very little has changed: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/12/05/labor/twin-cities-orchestra-lockout-update/

From the MinnnPost
http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2012/12/lockouts-highlight-need-change-orchestra-business

Several bloggers have decided not to mince words ... this one, for example, isn't happy with the communications she and other patrons are received from the orchestra's management:
http://mrissa.livejournal.com/840556.html

Bill Eddins' remarkable blog "Sticks and Drones' does a more in-depth analysis of the contract details:
 http://www.insidethearts.com/sticksanddrones/

How is all this acrimony affecting regular concert-goers?  Minnesota residents Paula and Cy DeCosse, holding worthless season tickets, pose questions (eerily familiar to us in Atlanta) to Minnesota Orchestra management in an 11/21 MinnPost article.

"Why is management only now tackling the budget deficits that have been mounting for at least three years?  ... If the orchestra is in financial crisis, why did the management undertake a huge and costly building project?

All of us, through our taxes and our personal gifts, have contributed to the Minnesota Orchestra. We have opened our wallets, as well as our hearts. With the musicians organizing exciting concerts like the one planned in December, this might be a unique opportunity to forge a new collaborative model for the way the orchestra operates and the way it engages the community — not just a business model, but one in which all Minnesotans could feel renewed ownership of the orchestra —  our orchestra, which at least one critic called "the best in the world."

That kind of relationship can only be built on trust, which at this moment is sorely lacking — for the musicians and for us."

Read the full article here.

http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2012/11/were-locked-out-too-questions-mn-orchestra-management#comment-form