MDSO Returns to the Stage of Orchestra Hall

The Musicians of the Detroit Symphony will be on-stage at Orchestra Hall, today, Saturday April 9, 2011, for the first time in six months.  We requested to be allowed to welcome the audience from the stage with the following "live" address but have been told this will not be possible.  Our message is important, however, and so we are taking this opportunity to speak to each of you, today,  through our social media network.

MDSO Promise and Thank You - April 9 and 10, 2011

DSO Patrons, Volunteers and Audience Members,

For the past six months the Musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra have been touring your neighborhoods playing to capacity audiences in some of the best acoustic settings that Metro Detroit has to offer.  We have played in your homes -- the homes of Kirk in the Hills, St. Hugo's Catholic Church and Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Hills, Our Lady Star of the Sea and St Anne's Catholic churches in Grosse Pointe Woods and Warren.  We have visited two St Patick's parishes  - one in White Lake and the other, our next door neighbor, here in Detroit.  We have shared our music in your childrens' homes and enjoyed every minute we spent with them in the schools of L'Anse Cruese North in Clinton and Groves High School in Beverley Hills.  Our holiday music-making took us to the Boll Family YMCA, Tumaini Center, Mariners Inn in Detroit, as well as Ruth Ellis Center in Highland Park. In all, we brought our music to you in nineteen special concerts around the Metro Detroit area.  

Thank you for coming to our home, today, and for allowing us to share our gift of music with you from the stage that we love dearly -- the wonderful and magnificent Orchestra Hall.  

We acknowledge that this season has been difficult for everyone affiliated with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The DSO's heart is troubled. We needed to address some major issues and we very much appreciated your patience and support while we did that.  

The Detroit Symphony is still in intensive care but with your help it will recover.  You have a voice. You are the voice of our audience, the voice of DSO patrons, volunteers and our community. We need to listen to your voice because we are nothing without you. We promise we will listen.

Our voice speaks best when we are before you, pouring our hearts out and sharing our love of music with you.  Please know that we will use that voice and will be tireless in the pursuit of artistic excellence. We remain committed to the vision of a vibrant city for Detroit and we believe that vision includes a major symphony orchestra.

We make this promise to each and every one of you, today: We will give you nothing but the very best we have to offer.   Michigan and the City of Detroit will recover and we will still be here when it does.  We are committed and we believe.

Thank you,

The Musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra

We would also like to express a heartfelt thanks from the musicians of the DSO to our thousands of supporters in Detroit and around North America and the world. It has been a long and difficult road. We were gratified to learn that many other people cared deeply about us and our orchestra.  

MDSO is appreciative of the time and energy spent in the intervening months by Senator Levin, Governor Granholm, Andy Levin, Dan Gilbert, Matt Cullen, and the Citizens' Group  in attempting to reach a resolution.

Locally, many lovers of orchestral music coalesced into the powerhouse that Save our Symphony has become in the few short months since it formed in November.  SOS will become the focal point of a broad new base of support for the DSO going forward.  

From Detroit to the four corners of the United States and Canada: our professional colleagues from the world of music created a wave of support which began before we had even announced that we faced difficult negotiations. Individual musicians, AFM locals and the members of dozens of professional orchestras from ICSOM, OCSM and ROPA wrote to us and sent an unprecedented amount of money to our Contingency Fund, well over $250,000. It mattered so much to us to know that our colleagues saw the struggle here as their own.  

We learned once again that the wide world of music and musicians is a small one. The solidarity we have felt in 2010 and 2011 will not be forgotten.

- The Musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra