I read with great interest Diane Streak's article ''Canberra orchestra wants to even score'' (May 16, p1) regarding funding for the Canberra Symphony Orchestra.
I am sure that we in Darwin, and in the Darwin Symphony Orchestra in particular, all wish the CSO luck in obtaining the increased funding it so richly deserves.
And I agree with Peter Sculthorpe about the CSO becoming the national symphony orchestra.
Darwin is far more remote than Canberra, and the cost of flying 60 or so professional musicians in for each concert would make the exercise of providing a symphony orchestra to the territory prohibitive in the extreme! So, we must build on what we have here.
The DSO, therefore, is not a professional orchestra, in that the majority of players are unpaid; rather it is a pro-am orchestra.
However, the DSO aspires to, and achieves, a very ''professional'' output. Indeed, some of the CSO players have performed with the DSO from time to time, and I am sure they would attest to both the quality and the adventurous nature of the performances, particularly those in remote locations.
The initial federal funds of $100,000 were made available to the DSO for it to increase the professionalisation of the orchestra.
It is, however, unlikely that the DSO will be, for the foreseeable future, like the CSO in its structure, as there will probably never be enough fully trained professional orchestral musicians resident in Darwin from which to draw a part-time fully professional orchestra.
That said, the DSO as a pro-am orchestra is well placed to achieve ever higher artistic standards as the number of professional musicians in the orchestra gradually rises. In this regard, the DSO is probably where the CSO was 30 or more years ago.
The additional $100,000 (not $150,000) of federal funding to the DSO was, in part at least, to assist the orchestra with the extra cost involved of flying musicians into Darwin to cover any important ''vacant'' chairs, and to ensure that the orchestra remained artistically vibrant through greater access to guest conductors and soloists of high calibre.
Dr Martin W. B. Jarvis, artistic director, Darwin Symphony Orchestra
Whiff of hypocrisy
I concur fully with Judy Bamberger (Letters, May 19) in her justified indignation at the Federal Government ministers' outrageously excessive spending on travel, and support her call for immediate, full and candid disclosure of such expenditure incurred in the course of discharging public duty.
We should all be concerned.
Peter Garrett's travel bill, which works out to $20,555 a day spent overseas, is an outrage in anyone's language, and in these difficult and challenging times, we should all demand that more reasonable care be taken in disbursing taxpayers' funds.
Otherwise, calls from the Government for extreme sacrifices from the retired and the vulnerable in our society must be exposed for what they truly are ultimate examples of political hypocrisy.
There will be a political and electoral price to be paid if they are indeed found to be recklessly spending the money they are trying to convince us we desperately need to borrow.
Ministers can contact me for advice on cost minimisation from the thousands of dollars a day to, say, a more reasonable $1500 to 2000. I do hope it wouldn't unnecessarily demean their positions and/or missions.
They may very well say with the Romans pecunia non olet (money does not smell).
But they need to remember it is our money they are splashing around.
Adam M. Rustowski, Belconnen
Fouler still
May I add my own observation to Ken Fowler's (Letters, May 15) regarding the misuse of words today.
My contact with the English language occurred several decades ago, but if I was to learn English from the way people around me speak today, I would be saying things like, ''The enormity of the amount of students which waste the majority of their time on grammar is ...''.
No wonder some people question Darwin's theory of evolution and insist that the human race is, on the contrary, undergoing devolution.
Nicholas Hassanoff, Pambula Beach, NSW
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