“The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra owed its vendors $2.1 million as of late April—a debt nearly double what it was 19 months earlier,” writes Mary Carole McCauley in Tuesday’s (6/25) Baltimore Sun. “According to a Baltimore Symphony Orchestra financial document obtained by The Baltimore Sun, 39.5 percent of the $2,141,109 that the organization owed to tradesmen was more than 60 days overdue as of April 24. That’s about $950,000 more than the $1,184,737 that the orchestra owed to merchants as of Sept. 25, 2017—an 80.7 percent increase.… ‘The BSO is working to pay its vendors, and we are deeply grateful for our many partners who are working patiently with the organization as we address these issues,’ Peter Kjome, the Symphony’s president and CEO, wrote in an emailed statement.… The organization is in the throes of a financial crisis and labor dispute that culminated with the decision by the board of directors to lock the musicians out for the summer beginning on June 17…. Bruce Ridge, the former chairman of the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, told the locked-out musicians that $100,000 has already been donated to the players by musical organizations in the U.S., Canada and Europe.”
Posted June 26, 2019
