Archive - 2009

1
Make Music a Part of Your Life and Never Make Life a Part of Your Music
2
Dear Diary
3
Antidote for the Music Major’s Bridge to Nowhere—Use Your Legos
4
Tab dump 12/7/09
5
Tab dump 12/6/09
6
I've got mail
7
I Don't Know, I Still Prefer a Clarinet
8
An important election you didn't know about
9
College Music Performance Majors—A Bridge to Nowhere?
10
The New (Model) Hampshire audition system

Make Music a Part of Your Life and Never Make Life a Part of Your Music

I suppose that most of the readers of the Polyphonic blog are aware that Leonard Slatkin suffered a heart attack 5 or 6 weeks ago.  I don’t usually pay much attention to reports like that, but since I’m just about the same age as Slatkin, I read his account of the incident with great interest. […]

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Dear Diary

One of the unintended side-effects of helping to negotiate a new contract for one’s orchestra is the history that one learns along the way. This makes sense if one thinks about it; negotiations (especially regarding non-economic items) are often attempts by one or the other side to remedy problems that were often unforeseen when the[…]

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Antidote for the Music Major’s Bridge to Nowhere—Use Your Legos

Legos.  You know what they are, little pieces of plastic that have an interlocking system that allows the user to combine them in an infinite number of ways.  With Legos you can make things like buildings or vehicles.  If you don’t like what you make, you can continually try to improve it by rearranging the[…]

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Tab dump 12/7/09

Norman Lebrecht writes a really good column. Why would someone do this? My orchestra gets an endowment gift for a really good purpose. My orchestra also got nominated for a Grammy. Alex Ross thinks Dudamel is the real thing. The next step is records that spin really fast and need to be changed every five[…]

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Tab dump 12/6/09

Would this be called a gaggle of oboists? Happy birthday. Would have been more impressive without the pay cuts. Some coverage didn’t even bother to mention the musicians’ concessions, although they did, of course, feel the staff’s pain. The Chicago Lyric Opera orchestra has a new contract after threatening to strike. New Mexico Symphony musicians[…]

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I've got mail

In a blogging career lasting about 5 years now, I’ve learned not to expect much feedback. It’s not because people don’t read blogs about orchestras or the AFM – the two topics I write about – because the traffic stats show otherwise. And it’s not that people don’t care, because otherwise why would they take[…]

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I Don't Know, I Still Prefer a Clarinet

University Turns iPhones Into Musical Instruments NEW YORK (Reuters) – Welcome to an orchestra of the 21st century. iPhones are being used as musical instruments in a new course at an American university. Students at the University of Michigan are learning to design, build and play instruments on their Apple Inc. smartphones, with a public[…]

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An important election you didn't know about

Most orchestra musicians don’t pay much attention to union politics. That’s OK: most politics in the AFM is not worth paying much attention to. But there was an election the other day that’s worth noting. The two largest locals in the AFM are Local 47 (Los Angeles) and Local 802 (New York). Both are dominated[…]

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College Music Performance Majors—A Bridge to Nowhere?

Music educators have been doing a fantastic job. The level of musicianship of college-age music majors continues to rise each year. Jazz players are entering as freshmen at skill levels equal to graduate students of years past, and “classical” musicians always seem to raise the bar with their technical prowess. Of course, one can always[…]

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The New (Model) Hampshire audition system

At the beginning of the 2009 New Hampshire Music Festival season, the Festival’s musicians were informed that they would be required to re-apply for their positions in the orchestra if they wanted to return for the 2010 season. It’s hard to overstate just how unusual this is in our business. “Unprecedented” would not be too[…]

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