Archive - 2013

1
11/22/63
2
Well… I Won’t Be Welcome There
3
“New” Business Models
4
Our conspiratorial industry
5
Serenade For Sixty Strings – A Tribute to Lawrence Leighton Smith
6
Misconduct in and out of the workplace
7
Corelli and the Elevator
8
Charleston decertifies
9
Bringing Down the Sky: From Great to Good in Minnesota
10
Intimidation

11/22/63

Some historical events are burned into the memories of everyone who lived through them. For my generation, the first such event – and, for me, still the most shocking – was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 50 years ago today. I was in 8th grade, about six weeks short of my 12th birthday,[…]

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Well… I Won’t Be Welcome There

It has been said that though the "educational" kids’ concert is merely a symptom of the general malaise in programming and concert presentation in the main orchestral season. It seems to be down to asking what audience and audience development do we want?

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“New” Business Models

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, the phrase “new business model” is far too often used as shorthand for “paying musicians less” – ironic given that paying people less is a very old business model indeed. It’s probably a phrase that should be abandoned simply because it’s been so contaminated. Yet there are[…]

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Our conspiratorial industry

One of the more intriguing aspects to the psychology of our industry is a general propensity to conspiratorial thinking. It’s not hard to find amongst musicians; the widespread belief that the League of American Orchestras A National Service Organization is behind all our woes is the best-known example, but conspiracy theories fester within orchestras as[…]

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Serenade For Sixty Strings – A Tribute to Lawrence Leighton Smith

In 1989, during his tenure as music director of the Louisville Orchestra, Lawrence Leighton Smith wrote an essay stating his personal view concerning the link between the number of players and quality of sound in orchestras. Smith’s “Serenade for Sixty Strings,” published in the March/April 1989 issue of Symphony, the magazine of the American Symphony[…]

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Misconduct in and out of the workplace

Many years ago a colleague of mine was pressured by management to retire after allegations of sexual misconduct against him became public. I remember being bothered about that at the time, as the specific allegations were about conduct that had happened in his home and had nothing to do with the workplace. Management’s reasoning was[…]

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Corelli and the Elevator

Go for it. What would you say has been the most important invention over the past five hundred years or so?  The automobile? Nuclear power?  The microchip?  Sliced bread? My vote…(drum roll)…the elevator!  You scoff, but think about it.  Before the elevator, cities could only expand as far as their geographical limits, hoist themselves four[…]

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Charleston decertifies

I was reminded yesterday of a classic newspaper headline that combined obviousness with a complete lack of useful information: Something went wrong in jet crash, experts say Something similarly went wrong in the Charleston Symphony, according to Norman Lebrecht: In an unusual move that may prove a sign of the times, players in the Charleston[…]

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Bringing Down the Sky: From Great to Good in Minnesota

I. The Tornado and the Plow Horse I recently plugged the words “Salieri” and “Festival” into Google, which limped back with a meager Salieri Opera Festival of 2010, presented by Fondazione Fioroni in Verona, Italy. Curious, I added “2013” to the search, and Google came back with only three results, none of which led to[…]

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Intimidation

What’s the most intimidating experience you have ever had? A one-on-one with an aggressively demanding boss? An IRS audit? Being pulled over by a traffic cop?

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