“There’s lots of good news coming in from the California Symphony,” writes Michael Zwiebach in Tuesday’s (8/1) San Francisco Classical Voice. “The latest is that the orchestra was in the black for the 2016–2017 fiscal year (which ended July 31 for the orchestra). Executive Director Aubrey Bergauer reports, in the orchestra’s quarterly newsletter that donations are up once again and the donor base has quadrupled ‘in recent seasons.’ Six years ago, the orchestra started its Sound Minds program, which delivers music education and individual instrument instruction to San Pablo’s Downer Elementary School [for] students in second through sixth grades… Downer Elementary Principal Marco Gonzales said: ‘The Sound Minds program is the most transformational program I have witnessed in my 22 years as an elementary school principal.’ … The Sound Minds program … is now serving 120 schoolchildren…. Music Director Donato Cabrera, is opening the new season with Nathaniel Stookey’s YTTE (Yield to Total Elation), Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, and Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915.… [In May 2018] the orchestra’s composer in residence, Katherine Balch. premieres her composition like a broken clock, alongside Sibelius’s Symphony No. 3 and Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with pianist Haochen Zhang.”
Posted August 3, 2017
