“The San Diego Symphony will announce tonight, before the Masterworks Series concert, that it is renaming its downtown facility in honor of the orchestra’s primary patrons,” Joan and Irwin Jacobs, writes James Chute in Friday’s (10/11) San Diego Union-Tribune. “The name was embossed this week in the main lobby above the box office and will appear on both sides of the building sometime in the next 30 to 60 days. In all of its materials, the orchestra will now refer to its home as the Jacobs Music Center…. In 2002, the Jacobses gave the orchestra … grants and bequests totaling $120 million, with $100 million earmarked for the orchestra’s endowment. The Jacobses have since contributed an additional $10 million to upgrade the 84-year-old former Fox Theater, including $2.5 million for extensive lobby renovations and improvements—including four bars and multiple LED screens—that were completed last week.” Following the orchestra’s bankruptcy filing in 1996, “Joan and Irwin Jacobs were instrumental in getting the symphony restarted in 1998, and then giving it the stability that has enabled it to build to a point where later this month it will perform for the first time at Carnegie Hall.”
Posted October 11, 2013
San Diego Symphony photo by David Hartig
