Author - Robert Levine

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In Memoriam
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In Memoriam 2013
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Why you don’t want your orchestra’s name to start with “M”
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What the Great Strad Robbery means for the future
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The Northern Front: Stunde Null
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Are orchestras “hostile” to women conductors?
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Baumol’s common cold
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Armistice Day on the Northern Front
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Minnesota, toxic leadership, and Milgram
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Leadership, solitude and musicians

In Memoriam

It’s always humbling to write the annual In Memoriam feature for Polyphonic, but never more so than this year. The number of highly accomplished people associated with our field who were also remarkable human beings will be daunting for anyone who’s considered what their own obituary might look like. Many of those who left us[…]

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Why you don’t want your orchestra’s name to start with “M”

First Minnesota, then Milwaukee, and now … Memphis: Following in the tumultuous footsteps of its Nashville counterpart, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra announced that it is facing a financial crisis that will require “aggressive steps” to complete the current season. “The Memphis Symphony Orchestra celebrates decades of accomplishments thanks to a committed group of patrons, musicians[…]

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What the Great Strad Robbery means for the future

Most readers of this blog have already heard of the events of last Monday here in Milwaukee. If you haven’t, the New York Times has a good summary: It should have been one of those nights musicians live for. Frank Almond, the concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra for nearly two decades, had just closed[…]

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The Northern Front: Stunde Null

In the aftermath of the most devastating conflict in human history, the epicenter of that conflict, Germany, experienced in 1945 what the Germans called “Stunde Null” – zero hour. It was an expression of the fact that communal life as they’d known it had ended but the society that would replace it was not yet[…]

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Are orchestras “hostile” to women conductors?

The attitude of professional orchestras to conductors of a certain gender is a perennial favorite of arts journalists, if not yet an actual Internet meme: Example of Internet Meme: not intended as a reflection of the author’s real feelings The latest example of such journalistic favoritism is an article on the BBC website a few[…]

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Baumol’s common cold

Musicians who have had the privilege and pleasure (dubious, in some cases) of discussing the future of professional orchestras with experts of various stripes are all too familiar with Baumol’s Cost Disease. The best description comes from the economist who came up with the concept, William Baumol: Any economic activity affected by it will tend[…]

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Armistice Day on the Northern Front

There’s been what intelligence analysts call “chatter” for a few weeks about a settlement in Minnesota being close. I heard some new chatter in the past couple of days, which led me to to set up a Google watch on the news. About twenty minutes ago, the official news came through, after some preliminary reports[…]

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Minnesota, toxic leadership, and Milgram

National Public Radio did a story yesterday that’s been picked up on Facebook by a number of Minnesota Orchestra musicians. I found it interesting in part because it also related directly to William Deresiewicz’s West Point address I quoted from yesterday. Today’s story was about “toxic leadership”: Top commanders in the U.S. Army have announced[…]

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Leadership, solitude and musicians

I’ve been trying to figure out if this article, written as a speech to West Point cadets by William Deresiewicz, a noted American writer and former academic, might have some insights for us. This is a very long quote from the article: What can solitude have to do with leadership? Solitude means being alone, and[…]

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