Buzzing Reed- Classical Music & Clarinet Culture

I feel like I’m in a bad dream, and that I’ll wake up tomorrow to make music for Columbus, as I and my colleagues have done for decades.

A friend just returned from an audition trip to Minneapolis, MN. She described the area around the Orchestra Hall as intensely marketed toward the symphony: a huge poster of their Music Director, Osmo Vänskä, Symphony Restaurants, Symphony Apartments. The whole area boasts of and features the symphony.

Here in Columbus, the silence is eerie from those who should know better: our Symphony Board, our Columbus City Council, our Mayor Coleman, our Greater Columbus Arts Council, our Governor Strickland, the Columbus Partnership, the Dispatch “Ohio’s Greatest Newspaper”, and those whose job it is to do what has been done in Minneapolis, make their orchestra everyone’s orchestra.

In their meeting today, GCAC decided to table (for future consideration) the pending grant for the CSO instead of dropping it. A small step, but good news none the less!

Please plan to attend this critical meeting of GCAC and tell them they must vote for funding the Symphony next season, as our Orchestra is most definitely NOT DEAD YET!

GCAC ANNOUNCES PUBLIC OPERATING SUPPORT GRANTS MEETING
Contact: Emily Swartzlander (614) 221-8492

COLUMBUS, Ohio – On Tuesday, May 27, the Greater Columbus Arts Council will host a public meeting of its Board of Trustees to vote on allocations for the 2008 Operating Support and spring Project Support grants. The meeting will take place from 12-1 p.m. at Columbus Dance Theatre, 582 E. Main St.

Technicalities and protocol excuses aside, GCAC (Greater Columbus Arts Council) is failing Columbus with its plan to abandon funding for our Symphony before the dust has settled in our current crisis. The story is unfinished, yet they have publicized their intention to sign their names to a premature end. Is this the kind of leadership you want running your city’s cultural engine? For once I can agree with Tony Beadle, the symphony’s Executive Director, who is quoted saying, “It just sends a message of nonsupport to the community.” They vote on the decision May 27th. You can contact them at GCAC.