Artful Impact Award Recognizes Symphonic Partnership in Indianapolis

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By TAHLIB

INDIANA---Perhaps an Artful Impact winner, like the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, an 83-year-old organization that weathered high-profile labor strife in 2012 and raised $5.4 million to stay afloat can be an example for others moving ahead. At its 28th annual Start with Art fundraiser, the Arts Council of Indianapolis presented one of its five annual ARTI Awards (Artful Impact) jointly to the  musiciansboard members of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, a moment that caused at least one musician to well up with tears. The honor topped a year when the symphony overcame a major financial crisis which united the musicians and the board in resolving their crisis. In contrast across the country management and muscians are pitted against the other: the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra cut its budget shortfall in half this year, to help stem the flow of red ink; and the Minnesota Orchestra’s scheduled Carnegie Hall engagements are hanging in the balance, as the musicians have been locked out for 11 months. 

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The musicians of the Nashville Symphony — which had been riding a wave of successes before the recession and a destructive 2010 flood imperiled their financial future — ratified a new one-year contract this week that will cut their pay by 15 percent.
He brokered peace in Northern Ireland and spent two frustrating years as an envoy in the Middle East. Now George J. Mitchell, the former senator from Maine, is trying to bring peace to the Midwest, as the mediator in the Minnesota Orchestra’s bitter labor dispute. The orchestra’s musicians have been locked out by management since they rejected deep pay cuts last October. The festering dispute silenced the ensemble’s entire 2012-13 season, forced the cancellation of a September recording session for its Grammy-nominated Sibelius cycle, and could force it to cancel a pair of crucial Carnegie Hall concerts in November.