“Like most large, traditional institutions in the 21st century, orchestras are rethinking their business models and redefining their missions as the market shifts around them,” writes Anne Midgette in Friday’s (4/13) Washington Post. “The paths to success … vary so much from one community to another [that] ‘The best summation is that there’s no way to capture it in a statement,’ says Gary Ginstling, executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra [which is performing in] the week-long Shift festival of American orchestras” at the Kennedy Center. “The festival’s premise is that only part of an orchestra’s value is expressed in concert performance…. Shift therefore selected the four orchestras it highlighted partly on the basis of their various outreach activities, which they also brought to Washington: a bilingual ‘Peter and the Wolf’ for schoolchildren by the Fort Worth Symphony; and a club appearance by Time for Three, the resident partner artists of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra…. Albany Symphony [performed] a piece by Dorothy Chang that was developed over the course of two years with schoolchildren…. The point that Shift is trying to make, in which many industry leaders concur, is that there already are some good practices out there. The problem is that those practices aren’t being heralded loudly enough.”
Posted April 13, 2018
