Very sad situation and unfortunately, it is being repeated in community after community across the US. The miserable aspect to all this is the more that consumers suffer cuts in everything from heath care to salary, all we can expect from this is a progressively weaker economy and less of the middle class.

Oh man. . .I hope the members of the Minnesota Orchestra can be reasonable. The Detroit Orchestra refused to accept any pay concessions and their Orchestra was out of service for almost a year.

What a bummer. There's very, very few people I know that possess the amount of talent that these people have.

Does anyone know what the trend has been with subscriptions and ticket sales over the past few years? I doubt the deficit will be any better this year; I know many people who are basically sitting out the season because of the convention center venue or what they think is an uninteresting program.

So the MN Orchestra can afford a $41M remodeling project for Orchestra Hall but needs pay cuts from their talented musicians? Um, sure.

Wow, 28%. Let's hope this is just an initial negotiating position. It is sort of laughable. To make people stop laughing the management and the director should agree to 25% cuts. Something tells me that is not going to happen.

What kind of salary cuts are the Minnesota Orchestra managers taking? 28% ?

You can be certain the administrators and managers will NOT be taking a 28% cut. Liberal organizations or conservative organizations the managers always win!

I remember after a big layoff when one of the first violins excitedly announced that he was buying a new farm with his raise. This was immediately after the musicians were told about the layoffs, which were caused by their exorbitant raises. While so many in the public are giving pity to the musicians' "plight", few give any thought to what they did to others. In fact, administration cannot come to the musicians with a request for cuts unless other areas take cuts first. Most (not all) of these people are out of touch. I am thrilled that something reasonable has been proposed. It's a business. This is a business decision. They can still buy groceries.

I know some of these musicians and all of them have gone through years of training to go along with additional schooling to get where they are today. Their pay is justified. This is a joke.