I have long had a soft spot in my heart for Harmony, which was the house journal of the Symphony Orchestra Institute. In part this was because the founders of SOI had the same curiosity about how orchestras really functioned as I did, and gave free rein to their curiosity in soliciting articles for Harmony.[…]
Read More“US composer’s secretary suffers near-fatal beating October 25, 2012 by Norman Lebrecht.” That’s how it showed up in my email. I don’t think that came out quite the way Norman meant it too, though.
Read MoreI hope and pray Principal Oboists named "K." find good reasons to continue their association with the SPCO. Hearing "K."…
There’s a very interesting story going around the Twin Cities, but this one’s about baseball. Apparently the management of the Minnesota Twins has decided that they need a retractable roof after all, for about a $100 million price tag. The chances of public funding are essentially zero, so the management is planning to reduce player[…]
Read MoreExcept that, of course, it’s the same conspiracy theory, only this time in the hallowed web pages of the Huffington Post: It’s the voodoo. That horrible, Kuru-inducing zombie voodoo. These are heady times for the League of American Orchestras (LAO) and their ilk. True, their suits have grown a tad more maggot-ridden since their early[…]
Read MoreI think it's the success of Scott Walker. He didn't bother trying to maneuver public sector unions into looking like…
These have been dreadful times for the musicians of the orchestras at the epicenter of the current epidemic of radical salary-slashing. Those orchestras’ audiences have been affected too, as have businesses in the areas around the concert halls. For students of labor relations, though, these have been very interesting days. No doubt pathologists during the[…]
Read MoreMinnesotans are known for being averse to conflict, generous to arts and educational groups of all kinds, and generally plain-spoken (unless, of course, such speaking would lead to conflict). So, on top of the ongoing Minnesota Orchestra lock-out, this comes as a shock, even if not a surprise: The Twin Cities’ distinctive status in the[…]
Read MoreAlthough maybe it’s the hair? Keira Knightley is working with violist/conductor Yuri Bashmet as a narrator: Keira Knightley and Yuri Bashmet again on one stage! When, in 2010 at the Winter Arts Festival in Sochi after the second intervention with Maestro Bashmet, Keira Knightley asked – not whether he is now developing the genre and[…]
Read MoreAlthough the guts of the Minnesota proposal (and the damage done by it) lie in the economics, there is plenty of other stuff not to like as well. In particular, there are loads of changes proposed to work rules; far more than one would expect in a normal negotiation, much less one in which the[…]
Read MoreIn an act of remarkable generosity, Drew McManus not only obtained the actual proposal made to the Minnesota Orchestra by management but posted it on his Adaptistration website. I know he’s planning on some analysis, but it was too tempting a document for me to resist reading and writing about any longer. So here are[…]
Read MoreICSOM Chair Bruce Ridge has joined the ranks of those writing about the underlying causes of the current situation in our industry, although of course he is hardly new to the party, having written extensively about the problems in the orchestra business for Senza Sordino over the years. It’s an interesting piece in many respects;[…]
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