In Thursday’s (10/6) Denver Post, Kyle MacMillan reports, “Battling a severe budget crisis, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra on Wednesday abruptly canceled half of its 20 scheduled concerts over the next two months, but it vowed to return to full operations in early December. The stopgap plan will result in ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’ in emergency savings and give the orchestra time to regroup, said Jerome Kern, who was elected board co-chairman Monday. He declined to provide exact numbers but said it includes another ‘huge’ cut in musician salaries, on top of a 9 percent reduction the players agreed to last month. ‘The options were to either suspend operations completely while we figured out where this mess was or to go to a reduced schedule, and everybody thought it would be better if the orchestra was in the community playing rather than not playing at all for two months,’ Kern said. The musicians are backing the move and are hopeful that ‘the community will rally behind’ the orchestra, said Pete Vriesenga, president of the Denver Musicians Association. … The symphony’s financial crisis came to light in an internal symphony report obtained by The Denver Post in September. … According to that report, compiled by an emergency 11-member committee, the symphony ran a cash deficit of $647,000 in 2010-11, a figure it has since revised to $1.2 million.” Kern will serve as co-chair with his wife, Mary Rossick Kern, who had “chaired the board in about 2001-2006, [and] got involved with the symphony again after reading newspaper stories and getting calls from musicians asking for their help.”
Posted October 6, 2011
