Archive - 2014

1
Be An Entrepreneur! Get Outside Your Comfort Zone!
2
The Baton and the Jackboot – Then and Now
3
Job Posting: Director of the Institute for Music Leadership
4
A Disgusting New Low
5
The past really is a foreign country
6
Alice Brandfonbrener, M.D.
7
Orchestras turned upside-down
8
Symphonie Addictique?
9
Who Won the Met Negotiations?
10
You Are Your Best Audience

Be An Entrepreneur! Get Outside Your Comfort Zone!

How many times have we musicians heard those phrases? Do they mean that we should try to be like Janice Martin, the violinist who plays while hanging upside down?  My most recent experience is not quite that dramatic….. “What time is the lunch break?”  I asked the stage manager, knowing that he was the one[…]

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The Baton and the Jackboot – Then and Now

Berta Geissmar was a doctor of philosophy, a musician, and an author. The poignant image she creates of Germany before National Socialism is one where culture and, in particular music, was absolutely at the forefront of life.

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Job Posting: Director of the Institute for Music Leadership

The Eastman School of Music invites applications for the position of Director of the Institute for Music Leadership, a senior leadership position reporting to the Dean. Eastman is recognized nationally and internationally for the quality, breadth, and intensity of its music education and for the unique emphasis on artistry, scholarship, teaching, and leadership. The Institute for Music Leadership serves as the hub of entrepreneurial activities at Eastman; it currently houses five divisions:

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A Disgusting New Low

This post originally appeared on the blog Mask of the Flower Prince.  It is reprinted here with permission. You know, over the course of the Minnesota Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera labor disputes, I’ve seen a lot of ugly things. Managements in both the disputes resorted to hard-ball tactics and inflammatory rhetoric as part of a[…]

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The past really is a foreign country

One of my favorite local public radio shows is Old Time Radio Drama on Wisconsin Public Radio. a show that consists of rebroadcasts of classic radio shows from the decades before television. We were driving home from the Twin Cities the day before Labor Day and caught some of the show as we came within[…]

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Alice Brandfonbrener, M.D.

I recently learned that Alice Brandfonbrener passed away on May 31 of this year (2014). I was deeply saddened to learn this, as I’m certain were many, many other musicians and members of the arts community who had come to know her over her 83 years. Here is a link to one obituary; here a[…]

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Orchestras turned upside-down

Diane Ragsdale is someone who thinks about our business in very different ways than do I; ways that I have sometimes believed were dead wrong and occasionally harmful. But she’s not wrong in her most recent post at ArtsJournal: In their article, Thinking About Civic Leadership, David Chrislip and Edward O’Malley convey that in the[…]

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Symphonie Addictique?

Normal Lebrecht recently linked to an article about a British documentary on addiction amongst orchestral musicians: Addiction is blighting the lives of many classical musicians as they grapple with performance anxiety and antisocial hours, a cellist has said. Rachael Lander features in a Channel 4 documentary that brings together classical musicians whose careers have been[…]

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Who Won the Met Negotiations?

According to Norman Lebrecht and Terry Teachout, the unions did: (Lebrecht) [Gelb]demanded 16-17% cuts from the orchestra and chorus and settled for 3.5 percent now, 3.5 percent later. No huge pain for the musicians, but huge gain. They have won the right to be party to major spending decisions, limiting Gelb’s powers as manager and[…]

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You Are Your Best Audience

Today’s post is the fourth post in our August Guest Blog Series!  Elizabeth Erenberg is a flutist and co-founder of the website www.Musicovation.com, a site dedicated to sharing and generating positive music news.  In the fluidity that is a music career, I define myself differently almost every day. Today, I am a blogger. Last week,[…]

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