With less than a week remaining before their final deadline for submitting a revised financial restructuring plan that will satisfy the Char-Meck Arts & Science Council, executive director Jonathan Martin and former guv James G. Martin are taking it to the streets today with a 12 p.m. rally for the embattled Charlotte Symphony Orchestra. The “Stand Up for Your Symphony” Rally on The Square will feature a speech from the former governor, newly elected to the chairmanship of CSO’s board, and performances by Symphony musicians.
A rally, in the old-fashioned baseball sense of the word, may be exactly what is needed to save Symphony from strangulation by the ASC and its practitioners of cultural cluelessness. By punishing Symphony with censure this past spring and threatening to cut off funding, the ASC expected Charlotte’s largest contingent of performing artists to increase their attractiveness to prospective donors and subscribers?
Of course, a rally in the deathbed sense of the word will be necessary if the ASC persists in its practice of euthanizing local arts groups. The beancounters who have sat in judgment in the lordly Carillon Building, decreeing how proceeds of the Queen City’s annual fund drive should be misdirected, have allowed a string of local companies to perish over the past 16 years. Unless there is a sudden transfusion of funding, the ailing Charlotte Symphony will join a deathly parade that includes Charlotte Shakespeare Company, Charlotte Repertory Theatre, and Charlotte Philharmonic Orchestra – all killed in part by the ASC’s malign neglect.
Maybe the Martins need to announce a name change for the Charlotte Symphony. “Pittsburgh” might offer better prospects. “Bank of America Orchestra” has a nice coppery ring.
Executive director Jonathan Martin is promising “exciting news of our progress so far” at the rally. So please be present at Trade and Tryon for your lunch hour, enjoy the music, act appropriately excited by the speeches and announcements, and if CSO staffers or musicians pass the hat, kindly drop in some negotiable currency.
You can be sure that cash will be spent on sustaining the Charlotte Symphony. Unfortunately, no such assurances have come from the idiots at the ASC.
This article appears in Aug 25 – Sep 1, 2009.
