In Sunday’s (6/3) Dallas Morning News (subscription required), Scott Cantrell writes, “American orchestras have been making a lot of unwelcome headlines. … Persistent economic jitters, shifting demographics and proliferating leisure options have taken their tolls. And there’s perennial hand-wringing about aging audiences and the increasing marginalization of the arts from mainstream American lives. But Jesse Rosen, president and CEO of the League of American Orchestras, meeting this week in Dallas, figures the best response is facing the challenges head-on. ‘There are significant threats to our field, and we need to have our eyes open to them,’ he says. ‘We need to find the opportunities in all these changes that are happening.’ Representatives of some 320 of the orchestras that belong to the league, a New York-based service organization, will be in Dallas Tuesday through Friday. … Along with sessions on programming, marketing, fundraising and board management, attendees will hear concerts by the Dallas and Fort Worth symphony orchestras, both at the Meyerson Symphony Center. … For all the gloom and doom, there are orchestras that have really dug into their communities and expanded their activities into hitherto unimaginable areas. They’re doing imaginative programming and playing to houses full of excited audiences.”
Posted June 4, 2012
