“The Toronto Symphony Orchestra has … announced that there will be no 2020-21 season as previously planned for the full orchestra,” writes William Littler in Saturday’s (8/1) Toronto Star. “Matthew Loden, CEO of the TSO, [says] the orchestra will be breaking up into smaller units to perform in a variety of venues, hopefully expanding the breadth of its audience along the way…. The TSO anticipates returning to a regular full orchestra season in 2021-22…. The TSO … will be playing in smaller venues with correspondingly diminished box office receipts…. A big question for 2020-21 has to be whether the public will be sufficiently supportive to make up for lost revenue…. Loden anticipates salary reductions … although the goal is to keep everyone employed. ‘Our first priority is to keep everyone safe,’ he says, ‘and there is an awful lot of creativity being generated by this crisis.’ Already groups of players are at work in online projects, some of them working as well in collaboration with the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra on retirement facility visits….’Taking a small ensemble to Sunnybrook (Health Sciences Centre) to give people a little bit of music in a difficult day can make all the difference,’ Loden says.”
Change font size
