Cleveland Orchestra Gets Record-Breaking $50M From Mandel Foundation

The Cleveland Orchestra announced today its biggest gift to date. The $50 million grant will help the century-old institution's financial picture as well as its plans for the future.

The funding comes from the Cleveland-based Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation. Orchestra CEO Andre Gremillet said over $31 million of the money will help shore up the ensemble's endowment.

“This is by far the largest gift ever received by the Cleveland Orchestra,” he said. “It’s a clearly historic gift that really is for the long-term viability of the orchestra.”

In appreciation, the orchestra will name its main performance space the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Concert Hall. In addition, the orchestra is renaming Severance Hall. It will now be Severance Music Center. The change signals the building offers more than one performance space and can host various community events. 

The financial support comes at critical time as the orchestra has had to cut costs during the pandemic.

The remainder of the money will support an opera festival and bolster digital streaming capabilities. Gremillet said the orchestra plans to install robotic cameras in the auditorium to unobtrusively capture performances for those who can’t attend in person. This past season the orchestra produced a virtual concert series that subscribers could access through it’s Adella app. Asked whether that experiment had proven to be financially viable, Gremillet rated it a success, for now.

“Adella has done the job in the first years in making sure that our patrons, our donors, our subscribers were getting value from us, even though they couldn't come to the hall,” he said. “So, in that way, it has worked really, really well financially. But the model for the future, we're working on, it is not simple. It has to work both from a mission standpoint and from a financial standpoint as well.”

Mandel Foundation CEO Jehuda Reinharz said the grant to the orchestra is double the amount of anything ever issued by his organization in its seven-decade history.

“It is critical, particularly at a time when the humanities are in many cases devalued by government agencies, state agencies,” Reinharz said. “We believe that the humanities are critical in any field, and there are not many organizations that support the humanities, unfortunately.”

The Cleveland Orchestra kicks off its new season at Severance Music Center October 14. 

The newly named Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Concert Hall. [Roger Mastroianni / The Cleveland Orchestra]