Music lover leaves $5,000 to every player in the orchestra

Music lover leaves $5,000 to every player in the orchestra

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norman lebrecht

July 15, 2016

In an age of $25 million bequests, $400,000 is but a drop in the ocean.

So Marjorie Fisher had to think hard how to make her bequest matter.

Marjorie loved going to hear her local orchestra, the Detroit Symphony. So when writing her will she inscribed a gift of $5,000 to each and every one of its current 78 players.

The news was given to the orch by her son, Phillip Fisher, chairman emeritus of the DSO board.

The Fisher family had been major donors all their lives to the orchestra, which inhabits the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center (pictured).

But this comparatively modest last gesture is in many ways the most touching.

More here.

 

max fisher music center

Comments

  • Suzanne says:

    How wonderful. Perhaps her idea will be copied by others….give large amounts to stabilize the institution but acknowledge the individuals who together make the music. For her son to say that his mother viewed it as a privilege to support the Orchestra says it all.

  • Richard S says:

    It’s a delightful gesture. But “a comparatively modest” one? It may be a modest sum compared to $25m. But it’s anything but a modest gesture, unless Mrs Fisher’s wealth was really quite gargantuan. And compared to the sums which might be left by the vast majority of the orchestra’s regular audience – to say nothing of a wider US, let alone global, population – it’s also a gargantuan sum.

  • Jeffrey Levenson says:

    Impressive and very personal gift. It amounts to a 5 or 6% raise for one year.
    A cellist can pay his kid’s college tuition. A flutist can pay off her used Honda.
    Very, very nice — pure philanthropy.

  • NYMike says:

    Anyone listening in Philadelphia??

  • Mark Henriksen says:

    Very sweet!

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