a Special Ticket offer from Oregon Symphony:

Below please find a special $10 ticket offer for Classical Elegance with the Oregon Symphony. Please feel free to circulate this offer to family, friends and other contacts who may be interested. There are some great seats on the orchestra level that are part of this sale, so act quickly to get the best ones. Enjoy!

$10 Friends and Family offer

Classical Elegance with the Oregon Symphony

Sat, March 29 at 7:30 p.m.

Sun, March 30 at 7:30 p.m.

Mon, March 31 at 8 p.m.

Juanjo Mena, conductor

An elegant evening of classical entertainment! Guest conductor Juanjo Mena is at the podium for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2, plus music from Wagner, J.C. Bach and Martinu.

Visit http://www.ticketmaster.com/promo/cefdhi and enter the password BEETHOVEN to receive your $10 tickets today!*

Read the Oregon Symphony’s latest review in The Oregonian: http://www.oregonlive.com/music/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/12051087077781.xml&coll=7

*Tickets subject to a nominal $3.05 Ticketmaster handling fee.

Starbucks has announced, as part of its major restructuring in how it does its business, the acquisition of the Ballard-based Coffee Equipment Company, maker of the $10,000 Clover single serving coffee maker.

This really chaps my hide because as a result of this move, Portland coffee roaster Stumptown Coffee Roasters will no longer be using the Clover at their locations.

A barista yesterday said that the company was no longer going to use the Clover (whose results I loved) and would be selling off the machines and going back to using french press pots.

I HATE Starbucks!!!!

Actually, I hate Stumptown for tossing out an exceptional way to showcase their coffees just because Starbucks bought the company that makes them - it’s a shallow and stupid decision, no doubt made on the basis of a knee-jerk, emotional reaction, and not out of how to best serve their customers.

Former ASOL and Chicago Symphony president Henry Fogel weighs in on the Flanagan Report.

What I have learned, in four years of visiting and spending a day with 125 different American symphony orchestras, is that it is impossible to generalize - but that a great many of them have been very smart, very flexible, and dynamic in dealing with different economic conditions. Orchestras that are attentive to changing demands and the very nature of their audiences are not only maintaining but increasing attendance. Orchestras attentive to their entire communities (beyond just their subscribers) are also raising more money, and operating in fiscally balanced ways. As I said earlier, Prof. Flanagan’s report is a valuable addition to the research that has been done about orchestras, and will provide the field with useful information that will be of use in continuing to adapt to our environment as it changes. But anyone who draws from it the conclusion that orchestras are in peril runs the risk of subjecting themselves to Mark Twain’s famous quote: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”