The Well-Tempered Ear

Memorial Union cancels the popular Tudor holiday dinners

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By Jacob Stockinger

It looks like the University of Wisconsin-Madison has done it again.

In June, the Mead Witter School of Music quietly posted an announcement that the campus-and-community UW Choral Union, which dated back 130 years, would be permanently disbanded. It shut down the Choral Union site on Facebook to comments and has never replied to critics. It waited until the summer and it did not contact participants to announce the decision.

Now it seems a similar thing is being done with the 90-year-old Tudor Dinner celebrations of the year-end holidays held at the Memorial Union.

The dinner features entertainment by the community Philharmonic Chorus of Madison (below):

The feasts and festivities are a popular and long-standing tradition at many universities and colleges.

And it has been at the UW-Madison, where since 1938 it has filled the Great Hall of the Memorial Union, as you can see in the 2018 promotional video on YouTube at the bottom.

But apparently no longer.

No reason has been given — not even if it is a permanent cancellation or a one-time postponement,

The lack of public transparency and common courtesy seems ironic at a campus where the music school boasts, “THE WISCONSIN IDEA AT ITS MOST AUDIBLE.”

The Ear just heard about this matter yesterday, thanks to a comment by a surprised and disappointed reader of the blog.

Here is that comment:

“Have you heard that the Union Tudor Holiday Dinner Concerts have been cancelled? I just heard today via a friend of a friend. Philharmonic Chorus members heard earlier this year that the Union cancelled them.

“I’m on the email lists for both the Tudor Dinner Concerts and the Philharmonic Chorus, and neither sent an email about the cancellation. 

“The Union’s website still has information about the 2022 dinner, and no mention of future ones being cancelled.

“I made travel plans that can’t be changed based on needing to be home in Madison to attend the 2023 dinner with my elderly parents, as we’ve done for 20 years.

“Given that the dinners have been held for something like 90 years, it seemed like a safe bet to plan my trip around the dinner. 

“Between this and the demise of Choral Union with an even longer tradition, plus hiding both facts and not communicating them, I’m very angry at the university.”

Everything seems to confirm this reader’s story.

And if you want to see what transpired with the dissolution of the Choral Union — including more than 40 strongly worded comments from those who attended or participated in the Choral Union concerts — here are links to previous postings on this blog: