- Todd Rosenberg
- Riccardo Muti
In a more perfect world, every elementary school child would learn to play a musical instrument, every family would be able to afford tickets to Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts, and public support for the orchestra would be so broad that there’d be no need to cultivate big corporate and private gifts.
We don’t live in that world.
So when the CSO held a next-season press conference at Symphony Center Wednesday, the event began with effusive thanks and a few smooches for donors, notably Bank of America (recently in the news for getting some public support of its own from the New York Fed). BOA is continuing its sponsorship of the orchestra for another year. The CSO also announced $13 million in gifts from individuals and foundations, including money to endow “in perpetuity” two principal chairs: flute and viola.
