From Think Denk:

 (Washington, DC) Former Senator George J. Mitchell released a blistering report Thursday that tied 89 performers of so-called “Classical Music,” including Mitsuko Uchida, to the use of illegal, non-musical cultural performance-enhancers. The report used informant testimony and supporting documents to provide a richly detailed portrait of what Mr. Mitchell described as “classical music’s thinking era.”The Mitchell report ran about 400 pages and was based on interviews with more than 700 people, including 60 former “classical” musicians, and 115,000 pages of documents. Ms. Uchida was the most prominent name on a list that included seven other most valuable players as well as players from all instruments of the orchestra, with the exception of the tuba.

An article was published today in the Detroit Free Press about the year-end fiscal situation at the Detroit Symphony, which had posted three consecutive years of balanced budgets - until this year. They were running an annual deficit for this year of $2 million, but managed to erase all but $190,000 for the end of year accounting. Pretty good, huh? No - not in the least. [Read more →]