A 2015 SPCO performance at the Ordway Concert Hall in Saint Paul, MN. Photo by Ash & James Photography.

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra announced today that all regular, in-person concerts will be suspended through June 2021. The announcement comes as the number of COVID-19 cases is increasing rapidly across the world, including in Minnesota.

The announcement reads:

With the health and safety of our audiences, our musicians, our staff and our community in mind, and in close consultation with a team of medical experts, we’ve made the difficult decision to cancel all regular SPCO concerts for the remainder of the 2020.21 season.

While it is disappointing that we cannot gather with our audience for the rest of this season, we will continue to share the orchestra and the music digitally during this time. In lieu of concerts with live audiences in attendance, SPCO musicians will perform from the Ordway Concert Hall with no audience on site, and these performances will be streamed through our free online Concert Library via our multi-camera high-definition video system, with audio provided by Classical Minnesota Public Radio. Each livestreamed concert will be rebroadcast in the days following the live performance.

Livestreamed performances will be held on January 16 and 30, February 13, March 20, April 10, May 8 and 22, and June 12. Programming for these livestreams will be announced soon. Our entire Concert Library, which includes on-demand recordings of 62 concerts and 124 compositions, will continue to be available free of charge, as well.

There is great uncertainty as to what the upcoming year will bring, but we hope that our regular concerts can resume in fall 2021. We will continue to work with medical consultants and follow recommendations from the Minnesota Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as we plan for a return to regular concerts whenever it is safe to welcome audiences back to our performance venues.

With your continued support, the SPCO will get to the other side of this crisis, and we look forward to the day when we can gather again to hear wonderful music by our amazing orchestra. We also will continue to pursue, with even greater determination, our vision of a great orchestra for everyone in the community. Thank you for your unwavering support of the SPCO.

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Twin Cities Arts Reader

The Twin Cities Arts Reader is an arts and lifestyles magazine whose coverage examines arts and selected activities in the state of Minnesota and across the country. It provides Minnesota's largest source of in-depth, critical theatre coverage, and reaches more than 600,000 readers per year.

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