The the Gothenburg Wind Orchestra is to be dissolved at the end of the year after a shortfall in public funding.
It is facing a deficit of around US$2 million.
The orchestra has flourished since 1992.
Press release here.
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A Wind Orchestra with what appears to be a full string section? Awful news regardless of who’s pictured.
Indeed – the picture is labelled as “Gothenburg Symphony” – a different orchestra.
A pity. I didn’t realize there was any wind orchestra out there with such a scale of operation that it could incur $2 million in debt.
Indeed. With ‘wind orchestras’ in America (we call them bands or, at best, wind ensembles), the players usually have to pay membership fees – often times through ‘Adult Ed.’ programs. I play in three – a tuba player/percussionist stays a lot more busy than in most symphony orchestras.
A “wind orchestra” is what we used to call a “concert band”.
I think Frederick Fennell started this with his “Wind Ensemble” at Eastman.
Since then we’ve been through “wind symphony”, “symphonic winds”, “concert ensemble”… anything to avoid using the word “band” even though 99.9% of the audience for these groups is people who previously played in school and college bands.
Here in Dallas there is a professional band that was founded as the “Dallas Wind Symphony” but now is just the “Dallas Winds.”
The continental Europeans seem not to have had a dedicated vocabulary for these things. My German teachers and Germans I’ve known could only offer a vague “Kapelle” or “Blasinstrumenten”.
Pity! A great institution. It should be kept alive. It is a shame that nowadays banks get public support and cultural institutions get just public despise