I was at work one night a few weeks ago, waiting for the 3rd movement of the Shostakovich 1st cello concerto to end (no slap at our soloist, Johannes Moser, who played wonderfully, but it’s a long sit with no need to count), when, for some unaccountable reason, I began to think about Baumol’s cost[…]
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I visited the website, Extra Criticum. As it states on the homepage, “performing arts pros trade opinions, ideas, questions and obsessions.” The bloggers published here cover a wide range disciplines in the Arts, so it’s not just a music site. And I was interested in a posting by Rolando Teco, since he writes about “success.”[…]
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While wandering through the local Barnes & Noble recently, I noticed a violin on the cover of a book called Devil’s Trill in the Staff Picks section. On reading the inside back cover, I saw that the author, Gerald Elias, is indeed the violinist I knew at Yale who left New Haven to join the[…]
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Did you know that getting flu shots doesn’t actually mean that one can’t get the flu? Me neither. We’re doing Petrouchka this week. It’s my least favorite of the big ballets that Stravinsky wrote almost 100 years ago, I suspect because it’s the most programmatic. But it works wonderfully well as a ballet, as this[…]
Read MoreBecause I teach the course, “Entrepreneurship in Music” at the Eastman School, I am frequently asked for advice from students who are contemplating setting up a business entity for their chamber group. They often begin the discussion by saying that their plans are to set up a 501(c)3 (not-for-profit). They usually say something like, “That[…]
Read MoreIn my previous two posts on the state of the classical recording business here and here, I talked about Anne Midgette’s observation that even top-selling classical recordings aren’t notching up impressive sales numbers: The dirty secret of the Billboard classical charts is that album sales figures are so low, the charts are almost meaningless. Sales[…]
Read MoreThis might be related to why orchestras seem to have so much trouble in the Sun Belt: “It was like an invitation to a date,” says Sarasota artist Pablo Rodriguez of his painting, “Modern Venus,” which he installed in early January in the Sarasota Orchestra’s Harmony Gallery as part of his exhibit, I’ll Be Seeing[…]
Read MoreHere’s a Ciara Pressler blog from fracturedatlas.org. Makes sense to me. And so timely. . .
Read MoreThis past week has been one meeting after another devoted to various personnel issues (not, thankfully, any terminations, in case you were wondering). The cumulative effect on me has been that I feel as if I’d gone 5 rounds or so with the front line of the Green Bay Packers. Orchestras are villages. We orchestra[…]
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Polyphonic.org – The Orchestra Musician Forum – Baumol’s common cold
[...] orchestras with experts of various strikes are familiar with Baumol’s Cost Disease. The best description comes from the economist…