Mimi Ernst wrote:

>If there are empty seats at the Academy of Music should the Philadelphia
>Orchestra move to the suburbs, too? What "community" are you talking about
>here?

In point of fact, it's planning to move to a new hall just down Broad
Street from the Academy, for which ground has been broken.  I think it
will be finished in a couple of years.

>What is the current state of community support for classical music in
>Philadelphia? Do free concerts still exist? Is the orchestra still recorded
>and broadcast on the radio?

The state of community support is about what you would expect from the
general situation in these United States:  pretty poor, but it's there.
The patient is on life support, but the priest has not yet been called
for Last Rites.  The free summer concerts at the Mann Center (successor to
Robin Hood Dell) are continuing, it seems, but you have to pay to get under
the roof.  There is no regular recording contract (this is true of many
other orchestras these days, of course), but disks appear sporadically.
Concerts are broadcast on the Temple U.  station WRTI on Sunday afternoons,
but I don't think the broadcasts are distributed nationally.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]