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Minnesota Orchestra Ends 15-Month Lockout - Concerts To Resume Next Month: Will Conductor Osmo Vänskä Return?


DonRocks

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"Three-Year Minnesota Orchestra Deal Ends 15-Month Lockout" by Graydon Royce on startribune.com

This may not seem like a big deal to some, but the Minnesota Orchestra is one of the top orchestras in the nation, and they missed their entire 2012-2013 season due to a bitter budget negotiation and resulting lockout.

To show how expensive it is to run a top-level orchestra, there are about 80 musicians, each with an average salary of about $120,000 - that's almost $10 million a year in salary alone (remember, these are world-class musicians; this isn't just some random local ensemble).

Minnesota Orchestra's website

Will Music Director Osmo Vänskä Return?

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This was utterly disgraceful. My many musician friends in Minnesota were mortified by the whole debacle. The New Yorker and other publications suggested the Minnesota Orchestra was THE best orchestra in the country under Vänskä; their recordings of Beethoven's symphonies were deemed by many the best in years, and their beginnings of the Sibelius oeuvre promised they would be definitive. Can they get him back? Will they ever really recover? The biggest tragedy in classical music in many, many years. You're damned right this is a big deal.

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