Category - Careers

1
It’s A Pitch
2
Be An Entrepreneur! Get Outside Your Comfort Zone!
3
Job Posting: Director of the Institute for Music Leadership
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A Disgusting New Low
5
Alice Brandfonbrener, M.D.
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Symphonie Addictique?
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A Note to Me: D.C.
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Some revisionist history from the AFM
9
Moving Forward
10
Experimenting with the Concert Experience: How Orchestras Are Being Creative

It’s A Pitch

This post first appeared in Symposium, the journal of the College Music Society.  It is reprinted here with permission. I’ve had two careers in my lifetime: as a symphony orchestra clarinetist and as a technology executive. One of the advantages these dual careers have given me has been the ability to apply my business experiences[…]

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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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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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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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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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A Note to Me: D.C.

What I Would Tell My Younger Self… As a university professor, I often tell my studio stories from my student days in order to make a point about something, usually practicing!  I have been thinking about this topic quite a bit this summer, as the new performing/academic year is fast approaching.  This is certainly not[…]

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Some revisionist history from the AFM

An article in the August 2014 International Musician got me thinking about Electronic Media Guarantees and their history: …[former ICSOM chairman Brad] Buckley recalled that the earliest instance of what was then called a “recording guarantee” came into existence decades ago with the Philadelphia Orchestra, during the tenure of Music Director Eugene Ormandy. The maestro[…]

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Moving Forward

As musicians it is quite natural for us to occasionally question our career decisions, but what if we are thrown a curve ball and something unexpected gets in the way of our well-ordered plans?  This is, in fact, what the author of this Editor’s Choice article faced at an early point in her career. How[…]

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Experimenting with the Concert Experience: How Orchestras Are Being Creative

The spring issue of Symphony magazine explores how orchestras are varying what they present to concert-goers. Messing with the Model by Senior Editor Chester Lane explores new ideas from several orchestras across the country. I was somewhat surprised and quite pleased to see my own Hartford Symphony Orchestra prominently displayed in this article! The Chicago[…]

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