Comment: Cancellation of the Rest of San Antonio Symphony's Season, by Mike Greenberg, IncidentLight.com

via IncidentLilght.com:

After a 5-hour meeting tonight, the San Antonio Symphony board said the orchestra will suspend operations at midnight on Sunday, Jan. 7, and cancel the remainder of this season. Board chair Alice Viroslav's prepared statement says, however, "To be clear, this is not the end of the symphony. As we observe San Antonio’s Tricentennial, it is the perfect time to recognize and celebrate the role that the fine arts have played in shaping our city, and to begin a true collaborative effort to firmly establish the symphony as the cornerstone of the arts in our community. It is our fervent belief that our city deserves nothing less than a world-class symphony."

We've all heard that song several times before. 

Meanwhile, concerts scheduled for this Friday and Saturday at 8 pm will take place. The program both nights, billed as a celebration of the city's tricentennial, holds music by Spanish composers, and by French composers adopting a Spanish style. Music director Sebastian Lang-Lessing conducts, and soprano Ana María Martínez (remembered from her splendid performance in the Verdi Requiem in 2013) is the soloist in zarzuela excerpts and in a set of songs by Manuel de Falla.

One irony in the timing of the season suspension is that the previous classical subscription concert, on Nov. 17 and 18, found the orchestra sounding like a truly major-league outfit – refined, polished, agile, precise, and fully at home in the excellent acoustics of the Tobin Center's H-E-B Performance Hall. Which brings us to another irony: Ham-fisted interference by H-E-B executive Dya Campos, Kronkosky Charitable Foundation managing director J. Tullos Wells and Tobin Endowment chair J. Bruce Bugg made the symphony's bad financial situation worse. If any of those guys ever offer to help you with anything other than no-strings-attached money, run away as fast as you can.

 

-- Mike Greenberg