“San Diego Symphony has maintained a balanced budget every year for 16 straight years. It achieves that through careful management, strong public support and, when you get right down to it, by being talented and dedicated enough to put a very attractive product on the stage. But innovative ideas also help,” writes Vincent Andrunas in Sunday’s (6/1) San Diego Union-Tribune. “The Symphony has a great program called ‘Partner With a Player,’ wherein participants sign up to sponsor a musician for a year. Sponsorships start at $15,000 ($25,000 for principal musicians). The program offers music lovers the unique opportunity to become personally acquainted with symphony musicians and develop a relationship with their player…. Photographs of partners with their players are displayed at Jacobs Music Center in Symphony Hall, and invitations to receptions, rehearsals and special events are among the numerous other benefits. Each year, the symphony invites the partners to experience a unique evening with their players.” At a recent event, a three-course dinner by chef Jeffrey Strauss held in mid-May, “Partners took seats beside their players on the symphony stage … [and] enjoyed an hourlong concert of classics by Shostakovich, Grieg, Lehar and Berlioz.”
Posted June 3, 2014
