Some days are painful. The Nashville Symphony has announced that it will suspend the remainder of its 2026–27 season after October 18. Its board describes the decision as the first step in a financial restructuring, so that’s something. And there’s a transition plan: Music Director Leonard Slatkin will still conduct the October 16–17 concerts. But after that, the orchestra’s musicians and many of the staff will be furloughed.
Mr. Micawber from Dickens’ David Copperfield says in the book, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” His observation fits here: in 2025, the Nashville Symphony brought in $28.1 million; it spent $30.4 million. The difference was $2.3 million—that’s rather more than sixpence. And the overall deficit is a good bit larger: the stated operating gap is $10 million. These are stark figures. But the first loss I and many of my peers imagine is a good bit simpler: it’s that evening when an audience would have gathered, the musicians would have taken their places, and instead the hall stays quiet. That’s a silence that hurts.
Of course, there are
some things that do continue. Fundraising concerts; a couple of big
events; and hall rentals. But the symphony players are back to the
experience of the pandemic: no set schedule, no financial promises.
It’s a scary time.
I should acknowledge my own place in
this story. I was not a season subscriber this year. (I am on
sabbatical, and it is hard to attend concerts in Nashville from
Minnesota or Italy.) Still, an orchestra is part of the life of a
city even when any one of us is away, or misses a season. Among the
comments I’ve saved, one person compared the orchestra to a
library: you may not go every week, but you want it to be there.
That’s exactly right: a great city deserves a great orchestra. It
matters.
I’ve done some work on the symphony as
an institution, of course. There are precedents that offer hope,
though none of them promises an easy return. The Denver Symphony went
bankrupt, and the Colorado Symphony emerged in its place; after
another period of severe financial trouble and canceled concerts, the
newer orchestra reported a budget surplus in 2016. Likewise,
Syracuse’s former symphony closed, but musicians helped form the
cooperative now called the Syracuse Orchestra. These are stories of
people rebuilding musical institutions through changed structures and
sustained work. But, of course, there are also reminders that the
original organization does not always survive: the Honolulu Symphony
was liquidated, although musicians and supporters subsequently
brought orchestral music back through the Hawai'i Symphony
Orchestra.
That distinction matters in Nashville. A hall
can still host events while an orchestra is silent, as ours is doing.
The musicians, however? They need work. Plus, an ensemble’s shared
sound takes years to make. Slatkin, newly appointed to a three-year
term -- and already connected to the orchestra through the opening
years of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center -- has said he intends to
remain its music director and work toward its return. I do hope
Nashville gives him and my many musician-friends something solid to
return to.
I named this blog Silences and Sounds to honor
the observation that silences can be meaningful. But this silence
hurts. I would rather hear the orchestra.
Sources and further reading
- Nashville Symphony, “An Update from Nashville Symphony CEO Mark Cantrell,” September 28, 2026, https://www.nashvillesymphony.org/22879.
- Nashville Symphony, “Leonard Slatkin Announced as the Nashville Symphony’s Music Director,” February 11, 2026. https://www.nashvillesymphony.org/media/press-room/press-releases/news-releases/2026-press-releases/leonard-slatkin-announced-as-the-nashville-symphony-s-music-director/
- Nashville Symphony, “Nashville Symphony Appoints J. Mark Cantrell as President & Chief Executive Officer,” July 16, 2026.
- Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, chapter 12.
- Stephen Trageser, “Nashville Symphony to Suspend Season Amid ‘Financial Crisis’”, Nashville Scene, Sept 29. 2026, https://www.nashvillescene.com/music/nashvillecream/nashville-symphonysuspend-2026-2027-season-financial-crisis/article_5f35ae09-bbad-4686-a940-601fc5c4f46f.html
- ProPublica, “Nashville Symphony Association,” Nonprofit Explorer (financial filings). https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/620550979
- Colorado Symphony, Nick Dobreff, “A Centennial Celebration” (September 5, 2023), https://coloradosymphony.org/a-centennial-celebration/ and “Colorado Symphony Announces Budget Surplus for the First Time in 26 Years” (September 12, 2016), https://coloradosymphony.org/colorado-symphony-announces-budget-surplus-for-the-first-time-in-26-years-appoints-brett-mitchell-as-new-music-director-in-2017-18/
- The Syracuse Orchestra, “Meet The Syracuse Orchestra,” https://experiencesymphoria.org/meet-the-syracuse-orchestra/
- Steve Flanter, “The Music Returns to Honolulu,” International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, https://www.icsom.org/senzasordino/2012/02/music-returns-honolulu/
- New Mexico Philharmonic, “About Us” (another example of musicians and supporters establishing a successor after an orchestra’s closure), https://nmphil.org/about-us/.
- Image: Schermerhorn Symphony Center, photo by Ryan Kaldari, Wikimedia Commons
