“Governor Mark Dayton made his first public comments on the Minnesota Orchestra lockout on Thursday,” writes Graydon Royce in Thursday’s (8/22) Star Tribune (Minneapolis). “The governor [said] he believes the two sides are in their ‘last window of opportunity.’ … Music director Osmo Vänskä has said he will resign if the orchestra is unable to get back in time to prepare for Carnegie Hall concerts in early November. ‘I’m hoping … that they both want to get it solved and they have until basically Labor Day to do so,’ Dayton said. Also Thursday, a new website was launched, called Save Our Symphony Minnesota. … The group announced its site on the same day that a post on the blog Song of the Lark reported that the Minnesota Orchestral Association had purchased 13 domain names that included the words ‘save, Minnesota’ and ‘orchestra.’ … Gwen Pappas, the orchestra’s spokeswoman, said the association reserved the domain names in the spring of 2012, about six weeks after negotiations had started and it appeared they would be contentious…. [Labor expert] John Budd said, … ‘I imagine the rationale was more to protect the brand than stifle dissent since a creative dissenter should be able to come up with a 14th domain name, not to mention Facebook and Twitter.’ ”
Posted August 23, 2013
