Key composer leaves Minnesota Orchestra amid contract fallout

kernis

Aaron Jay Kernis, a Pulitzer Prize winning composer who founded and directs the Minnesota Orchestra's Composer Institute has quit that post.

The resignation of Kernis is the latest fallout from the year-long labor dispute between Minnesota Orchestra management and musicians and comes just hours after conductor Osmo Vanska resigned from the orchestra.

In a scathing resignation letter, Kernis lamented the "dismemberment" of the orchestra and took management and musicians to task for not finding common ground.

"I have personally never seen two sides that show such unwillingness to sit down together and attempt to tackle the major challenges that confront the orchestra," Kernis wrote. In all of this the audience of music lovers who most appreciate the orchestra's extraordinary gifts have been forgotten and their voices disregarded."

Read Kernis' full resignation letter:

More information to come.

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