Archive - November 2009

1
Tab dump 11/30/2009
2
Not Your Regular (Taped) Nutcracker
3
Lead Like the Great Conductors
4
A local view of the NHMFC
5
No Crystal Ball, but . . .
6
What Happens Backstage Stays Backstage
7
Musicians to the ice floes, please
8
Always the Last One Out
9
Tab dump 11/22/09
10
When the excellent becomes the enemy of everything

Tab dump 11/30/2009

Pascal Rogé does good and does smart at the same time. Thanks on behalf of all of us. The Toronto Symphony posted a surplus for last season. Musicians in the Sarasota Orchestra have a lot of community support in their current labor dispute. The recession is hurting artists. (Did you think otherwise? Me neither.) This[…]

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Not Your Regular (Taped) Nutcracker

This weekend DFW area musicians began protesting the Texas Ballet Theater’s Nutcracker performances which will run in both Dallas and Fort Worth – without an orchestra.  For those of you who have been following this fiasco, you know that we have been protesting the TBT’s performances sans live music for more than a year now.[…]

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A local view of the NHMFC

In addition to the comments in response to the posts on the New Hamspshire Music Festival cluster***k, I’ve received a number of private emails. I’ve requested, and received, permission to quote extensively from an email sent to me by a local observer with many connections to the Festival. Anyone likely to read this knows that[…]

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No Crystal Ball, but . . .

For the past four days I’ve been in San Diego, CA where the Eastman School’s Institute for Music Leadership, of which I am Director, presented a pre-meeting workshop at the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) annual meeting. The title of the workshop was, “The Entrepreneurial Music School in a Challenging Economy.” Since it’s[…]

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What Happens Backstage Stays Backstage

Well, except for the parts I’m going to tell you!  No names of course.  LOL. Seriously, performers have to be able to trust orchestra librarians to handle backstage situations with professionalism, courtesy, discretion, and, above all else, help when they need something.  It wouldn’t be right to betray that trust, so I won’t — the[…]

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Musicians to the ice floes, please

If one single factor underlies the turmoil at the New Hampshire Music Festival in the minds of the musicians and the external support group SOON, it appears to be the fear that Festival management intends to replace the orchestra with another group; a NYC-based orchestra called The Knights. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the fears have[…]

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Always the Last One Out

It’s just the way things are.  The orchestra librarian is the last one out of the building. Although the percussionists and stage hands might try to dispute this claim, they don’t stand a chance.  Oh yes, they obviously have their fair share of packing up after performances (it is how I got to know my[…]

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Tab dump 11/22/09

Orchestras, like Google, can make money out of Internet searches – just not as much. Conductors can blog too. Conductors can also do bad and illegal things. So can some managers. Michael Hovnanian did not enjoy his very large Midwestern orchestra’s week with Christoph von Dohnányi. It’s possible to write a concerto for just about[…]

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When the excellent becomes the enemy of everything

While doing some research on the New Hampshire Music Festival situation, I came across a blog post by Henry Fogel that I found both interesting on its merits and quite relevant to what’s been going on at the NHMF. Back in May on his blog on the ArtsJournal site, Henry wrote about becoming Festival Director[…]

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