“The Memphis Symphony Orchestra and the University of Memphis have formed a partnership [that] will rebrand the orchestra as ‘The Memphis Symphony Orchestra in Residence at the University of Memphis,’ ” writes John Beifuss in Thursday’s (5/5) Commercial Appeal (Memphis). In the “three-year renewable deal,” the orchestra “will retain its status as an independent nonprofit institution [and] its headquarters will relocate this fall from South Mendenhall in East Memphis to currently unoccupied Newport Hall on the U of M campus, for what [MSO Board Chairwoman Gayle S. Rose] called a ‘huge’ financial savings…. The orchestra will perform … in the 1,200-seat auditorium inside the university’s planned $40 million music center [and] increase collaboration between symphony professionals and the roughly 500 music majors enrolled at the Scheidt School…. A planned ‘Institute for the Arts, Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurism,’ a hub for arts-centered solutions to business and government problems … would function as something of an arts equivalent to the FedEx Institute of Technology on the U of M campus…. The orchestra’s many community projects will remain in place, and its Masterworks concert series will remain at Downtown’s Cannon Center for the Performing Arts.” Said MSO board chair Gayle S. Rose, “Fundamentally, it changes our business model.”
Posted May 6, 2016
Pictured: The Memphis Symphony Orchestra in performance at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts
