Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vanska February 3, 2013, performing a portion of their Grammy nominated performance, here.

July 23 and 24 I did two posts related to “Detroit” (see them here and here.) I put “Detroit” in quotes, since the word itself has become a useful hate word, a label: “look at THEM, failures…”
The issue, of course, is who “THEM” is defined as being.
The battle lines are now drawn, as to whose fault “Detroit” is: Capitalism itself; or the poor people of Detroit who, it is suggested, lacked the good judgement to have their city efficiently run by…Capitalists. I’ll let that debate rage on.
Meanwhile, here at home, largely unnoticed, the Minnesota Orchestra ten month Lock-Out by management (it is NOT a strike, as some suggest), is at a crisis stage. A Big Dog, George Mitchell, has been engaged to attempt to mediate a settlement within the next month or so. It is impossible to guess the outcome. But the conflict is in the news again, thankfully.
Disclosure: I’m a longtime Minnesota Orchestra fan and subscriber – a “listener” who pays plenty of money every year to hear world-class music in Minneapolis. Here’s my position, filed June 21 and occasionally updated since then.
So, what does Minnesota Orchestra have to do with “Detroit”?

More than a bit, I suggest.
The Twin Cities has been my home since 1965. And it has been a place to be proud of, a “Major League City” of over 3,000,000 residents.
“Major League”, of course, means Major League Basketball (1947), Football (1960), Baseball (1961), Hockey (1967), and Women’s Basketball (1999), and probably some other sports I’m not aware of.
In the Twin Cities, we apparently take “Major League” seriously.
And long before those sports, there’s been Major League Music, first known as the Minneapolis Symphony (1903, later renamed Minnesota Orchestra in 1988), whose last concert as an orchestra was over a year ago, and whose new “stadium”, a remodeled Orchestra Hall, particularly a fabulous new lobby, is supposed to open in September, perhaps without an Orchestra.
This Minnesota Orchestra, locked out, has been known as one of America’s five top tier Orchestra’s: the Minnesota, New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago Symphonies.
Minnesota’s “Detroit” has come to be the unresolved dispute at the Minnesota Orchestra, and it is useful to consider the implications of the potential loss to this community if the Orchestra is downgraded.
Alan Fletcher, President and CEO of the prestigious Aspen Music Festival, on June 24, 2013, defined the four key players in an orchestra as follows: “musicians, donors, administrators, and listeners”. (His entire remarks are here. Note especially the three paragraphs beginning “Classical music in…”. He will be speaking here, in Minneapolis, across the street from Orchestra Hall on August 20. Details here.)
Of the four groups, I have been “listener” since 1978, and a small additional “donor” for quite a number of years. I gave when asked. (“Donors” in Fletcher’s context probably refers to the mega-buck folks who donate millions to the Orchestra endowment; “Listeners”, on the other hand, are the ones who fill the seats and pay substantial money for the privilege.)
In this four-cornered “quartet”, it occurred to me, it is the “listeners” who were not so much as asked for their opinion. Perhaps I missed the memo, but I do pay attention to such things.
And it is we listeners who pay a good share of the ongoing bills; the endowment from “donors” is a savings account, the nest egg to be used to help out for things like building the mega-bucks new lobby which, apparently, is more important than the music inside the hall.
In the case of the Minnesota Orchestra, it seems to me, it was the Administration, the big people unknown to listeners like me, who made all of the decisions that have put me and my colleague listeners out on the street for an entire year.
Sooner or later, this conflict will be settled – they always are. I reiterate what I said June 21: “I have taken my stand, as a listener: Until the Minnesota Orchestra Musicians, through their Union, encourage me to return to Orchestra Hall or to Orchestra programs, I will not pay for nor attend any event at Minnesota Orchestra Hall, nor any other event scheduled by the current management or Board of the Orchestral Association.”
I may be just a “grain of sand”. But I am that….