Ever noticed how things go in seasons? Awards season, concerts announcement season, and right now it's financial results season (as well as end-of-year review season and nearly next-year-preview season). For some orchestras this has proved uncomfortable, underlining bitter disputes (Minnesota) or just particularly tough times (Milwaukee).
But there are better news stories. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and this is especially cheering as its home city has had so many problems lately (and the orchestra itself has had its share of grief in recent years, with a strike that lasted six months), is doing well. Not only has it not made a loss, the first time that has happened in five years, it has even made a profit. I'll write that again. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has made a profit. A small one. But a profit! It does rather feel like someone has spotted the dodo.
Good for them! Ticket sales are up--and they're not the only classical music institution reporting an upswing in bums on seats--and so are donations. One of its biggest areas of growth, reports the New York Times, is in digital. Detroit has gone the Berlin Philharmonic route and launched its own regular webcasts service, which have garnered 300,000 viewers.
The Cleveland Orchestra broke even. And they have also announced prodigious touring plans. Vienna and Paris in particular, say the Cleveland Plain Dealer, will be centers for its international activities. Slovakia, too, is a target (Cleveland and Bratislava are twinned and there are historical ties between the locales). The plans follow hot on the heels from their 2013 European tour, which was accounted a great success.
