American Orchestras Are Facing A Crisis

Chalk up another casualty to the economic crisis of 2008…The American Orchestra. Throughout the 1990s, major orchestras grew inside of an economic bubble of their own -- with donors and corporations funding generous contracts for musicians, and underwriting new concert halls and designing ambitious programs to court bigger audiences.  That bubble has since burst, exposing some of the nation’s premiere institutions to bankruptcies, foreclosures, lockouts and strikes. Philip Kennicot art and architecture critic for the Washington Post and he wrote about the current crisis facing America’s orchestras for New Republic.