disaster in detroit

[Hoppy T. Frog]

OMG, really? That's crazy.

The Kansas City Symphony has had a near totally flexible season ticket policy, for the entire 15 years I've been going. Buy a half-season classical package, and move the tickets around however you like to whatever other classical concerts you want. There's an up-charge if you want to switch something to a pops concert (especially their most popular Xmas concert), but basically you can move everything around however you like.

I'm the same as Hoppy T. Frog -- I cherry pick the 20th century concerts, and those with less played-to-death late Romantic stuff (especially concerti that one might not get to hear every decade -- like, say, Amy Beach's piano concerto - which I saw once in St. Louis).

That's insane that the National Symphony and others don't do something similar. I'm sure as hell not going to buy any season ticket packages if they lock me into specific concerts. Hell, half the time there was one weekend I would be out of town, or something, and have to switch tickets around for stuff like that.

To be fair to the National Symphony this current season they had offered an all Mahler "mini-package" of all three concerts with Mahler symphonies. I jumped at that, of course. Why they did not repeat the experiment for 2011-2012 (of course this time for a different composer, or style of music) I don't know. They are doing last minute "half-price tickets" through the local half-price ticket vendor, but I like to plan ahead and not wonder whether or not a concert I'm interested in will offer discounts (the subtext through all this is that I'm on a limited budget).