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Welcome
WELCOME TO THE 10TH SEASON
Welcome to your NMPhil’s 11th year and 10th season of performances! We never expected that the orchestra would be absent from the concert hall for more than 18 months. We are so happy to be back and again live out our mission of “enriching lives by providing excellent music, community engagement, and educational opportunities.” Your NMPhil is the backbone of New Mexico’s performing arts and will again create culture that makes this a great place to live, do business, and attract and keep talent that ensures the vitality and future of Albuquerque and New Mexico.
This season, our Classical and Rock & Pops series concerts will continue at Popejoy Hall. A very exciting venue development is our new partnership with Immanuel Presbyterian Church, whose beautiful sanctuary will be our home for our Afternoon Classics series as well as other concerts. This historic building and its membership are part of the “sacred spaces/civic places” movement in the U.S., and we are honored to be a key community partner.
This season, we look forward to welcoming new members to the orchestra and celebrating loved members of your New Mexico Philharmonic who retired last season or who are retiring this season.
On a somber note, we are deeply saddened by the passing of Niels Galloway, a member of the Horn section and longtime beloved member of our musical family. We will miss him.
After the abrupt and unexpected end of our 9th season in March 2020, we again surveyed you, our most important stakeholders, and despite the loss of almost 1/3 of our season you again gave strong endorsement for our concerts and programs: 96.3 percent artistic excellence and 95.8 percent overall satisfaction for six years in a row, world-class levels for any business. We are already working very hard again this season to continue to earn this level of approval from you.
Your support for the last 18 months during the pandemic has been astounding and humbling—half of our subscribers donated their tickets back to the NMPhil for concerts canceled due to COVID-19. Thanks to careful management, Roberto and Marian taking significant pay cuts, and our continual pursuit of new and special funding, such as the Paycheck Protection Program, we were able to provide the musicians full pay in the 2019/2020 season and almost half their normal pay in the 2020/2021 season, even though COVID-19 kept them from performing. We again begin this season with no recurring operational debt and well in the black. We are especially delighted to announce that the New Mexico Philharmonic Foundation, entering its 4th year, has a corpus of more than $2,000,000 and a challenge gift of $250,000, which when matched will bring the Foundation to more than $2.5M. Please consider a gift to the Foundation now, and your impact will be doubled.
We are honored to continue leading your NMPhil with Roberto and are delighted to be launching this season with the NMPhil in excellent fiscal as well as physical health.
Marian Tanau, Executive Director
Maureen Baca, Board President
