Category - Miscellaneous

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11/22/63
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Bringing Down the Sky: From Great to Good in Minnesota
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Intimidation
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Wu Man and Her Pipa
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Did You Mean to Do That? — A Traveler’s Reflections
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On Star Wars and the Baby Boomers
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Red line in Minnesota gets redder
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The Role of the Orchestra Committee vs. the Local
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Final thoughts on the 2013 AFM Convention
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An historic day for the AFM

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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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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Wu Man and Her Pipa

The Hartford Symphony had opening night concerts this past Friday and Saturday, featuring our beautiful Austin organ with a Bach Toccata (we were joined by the Connecticut Youth Orchestra) and the Saint Saens Organ Symphony. But in between we played the Lou Harrison concerto for pipa and string orchestra, featuring Wu Man. It was a[…]

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Did You Mean to Do That? — A Traveler’s Reflections

I love sitting in studio classes, experiencing that unique relationship between a master teacher and a student. It always feels like a privilege to hear and see the trust that has been generated and to feel the intensity of the learning and teaching model.

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On Star Wars and the Baby Boomers

It was recently announced that John Williams will compose the music for Star Wars: Episode VII.  This is great news for fans of his music all over the world, and it could be great news for smart orchestras too.  A new Star Wars movie is the sort of cultural event that has largely untapped possibilities[…]

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Red line in Minnesota gets redder

I promise that some day I will post on something other than the Minnesota Orchestra labor dispute. But, at the moment, it’s the most important thing happening in our field. The news yesterday from the Northern Front was not encouraging. The first item was that Minnesota Orchestra management has apparently set a kind of deadline[…]

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The Role of the Orchestra Committee vs. the Local

An interesting musician session at the League’s June conference featured a panel discussing “The Role of the Orchestra Committee and the Local Union.” The panelists were Robert Levine, Principal Violist of the Milwaukee Symphony, Senior Editor at Polyphonic and former Chair of ICSOM; Tom  Jöstlein, Associate Principal Horn of the St. Louis Symphony, and Chris[…]

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Final thoughts on the 2013 AFM Convention

I now know how Charlie Brown would have felt had, just once, Lucy let him actually kick the football. He would have felt a stunned disbelief that what he had long wanted to happen – and what should have been happening all along – finally did happen. I don’t know what he would have felt[…]

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An historic day for the AFM

Read about it here.

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