In Saturday’s (12/10) Detroit Free Press, Mark Stryker writes, “Janis Mepham used to travel with her husband from their Dearborn home to hear the Detroit Symphony Orchestra downtown at Orchestra Hall. But the last concert she attended was six or seven years ago , and with her husband’s health now limiting his mobility, she’s not comfortable navigating the city on her own. Yet there she was Friday morning listening to the DSO deliver a program of baroque favorites by Bach, Handel and Vivaldi led by guest conductor Matthew Halls and violin soloist Nicola Benedetti. … The DSO inaugurated its new Neighborhood Concert Series on Friday at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts. The series—packages of four concerts in six communities—Beverly Hills, Bloomfield Hills, Dearborn, Grosse Pointe Farms, West Bloomfield and Southfield—is a key pillar of the symphony’s post-strike strategy to broaden its audience and donor base and rebrand the DSO as a more populist institution. … Initial sales have been encouraging. More than 1,200 four-concert subscriptions at $75 each have been sold. … DSO officials say that 80% of the buyers have no subscription history with the orchestra in the past five years and 33% have not bought a ticket for any DSO product in the same period.”
Posted December 14, 2011
