In today’s economic climate, it’s become almost routine for orchestras and opera companies to cut staff and budgets. But it’s far from routine for an orchestra’s musicians to volunteer a cut of their own accord. Yesterday, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra announced that its players had unanimously agreed to forgo wage and pension rate increases and other promised elements of their 2009-10 contract packages, taking an 8 percent cut to make what amounts to a $1 million donation to the orchestra.

This is the new age we live in. We all would rather continue to work and make compromises. twenty years ago it wasn’t quite like that. Go figure.

But the interesting thing about this particular story is that the musicians did this before being asked to. Or so we are told. How ’bout that?!