To my fellow arts journalists

Do any of you know where to find the NZSO attendance data, or that same data for the local orchestras? I've heard anecdotally that Orchestra Wellington regularly fills the Fowler Centre, while the NZSO seldom does. - Transparency is one of my bugbears as a political person, and I've always thought that my 'colleagues' are used to having black boxes of theoretically infinite state funds... however, we don't live in Europe and we never will. So, to me, I think that either the NZSO should become more familiar with high-end philanthropy in the vein of the US orchestras, or simply disband and let these local orchestras that are developing local audiences also have the best players available. If Sir Peter, Dame Fran and VUW want a professional film scoring orchestra, then what they should do is specifically set one up for that purpose. That's what the National Philharmonic Orchestra was in the UK back when London was the centre of the film scoring universe... ie the 1960's-1990's. 👍