America must save its orchestras

Storied orchestras across the country are going under — and we won't realize what we've lost until it's too late

A violin.
(Image credit: Illustrated | bob_sato_1973/iStock, phongphan5922/iStock)

On April 28, 2015, as the city burned and amid a curfew that meant the cancelation of evening performances, members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra gathered on the street outside the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and performed Handel, Bach, and Beethoven for random passersby. It will probably go down as one of the only edifying things to have happened in public in this country in the last decade: a response to senseless destruction that was ennobling and deeply human.

Two years later members of the BSO find themselves outdoors once again. This time it is not of their own accord. The players have been locked out of their own concert hall because they are refusing to agree to a new contract that will reduce the number of their performances. For the second time in recent years the orchestra recently borrowed from its own endowment to make payroll. The $2.3 million loan that made it possible for them to continue their invaluable work is a fraction of what the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, whose presidential campaign is going to end in a meaningless fourth or fifth-place finish, is able to raise in one quarter of fundraising. The otherwise sensible and moderate Republican governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, is refusing to release $1.6 million in emergency funding approved by the state legislature. What philistines we are.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.