The Minnesota Orchestral Association gives a dumbfounding report of its financial situation. This increasingly Borgesian entity managed to spend $13 million in its performance-free year, including $885,000 on "negotiations and negotations related" — one assumes that this sum went to the firm of Felhaber, Larson, Fenlon and Vogt, experts in union lockouts — and $616,000 on "advertising and promotion." Jon Campbell, the board chair, reaches a brain-teasing conclusion: "The fact that the organization’s deficit is substantially smaller in a year without any performances indicates the degree to which this business model is out of alignment." Meanwhile, ten state legislators have called for the resignations of Campbell, his fellow board member Richard Davis, and Michael Henson, the CEO. Save Our Symphony's report on the orchestra's collapse reaches this ironclad conclusion: "MOA leadership has no remaining credibility." The Minnesota Orchestra Musicians, running on a budget comparable to the MOA's "advertising and promotion" expenditures, present their next concert on Saturday. Their spring season will include appearances by Osmo Vänskä, Joshua Bell, Itzhak Perlman, and Hugh Wolff — a lineup that suggests the isolation of the MOA from the remainder of the musical world.
More: Robert Levine is also amazed at some of the figures and statements in the MOA's report. He writes: "The story of how the board of the Minnesota Orchestral Association allowed three men to drive one of the great American orchestral institutions into a deep, deep ditch will be studied—with fascination and horror—for as long as there is an American nonprofit sector."