In most years, a press release headed "MOA Announces Year End Results and Elects Board of Directors" would have even most music industry observers yawning and reaching for the delete button. But this is not most years, it is the most challenging time in the American classical music scene's history, and MOA stands for Minnesota Orchestra Association, the body that runs the orchestra that has tragically become the crisis' poster boy.
Few who know anything about the classical scene in North America will be ignorant by now of the long, bitter industrial dispute dogging that fine orchestra. Most will know that music director Osmo Vänskä walked out, exasperated. Some will have heard rumors that the players are considering starting an alternative group under another name. But the management insist that the cost-cutting measures they have put in place were vital, and furthermore, that some very reasonable compromise offers they have made were turned down flat.
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