Those handful of us in the orchestra blogging community can always count on some conductor, somewhere, doing or saying something really dumb to rescue us from having nothing to write about. Our latest benefactor is Jaap van Zweden, music director of the Dallas Symphony: Conductor Jaap van Zweden has won international praise for elevating the[…]
Read MoreYour mileage may vary, of course: …For those of us who don’t have the time nor will to train, it turns out our job choice might play a part in our ability to remember. A new study in Neurology looked at which professions, if any, best preserve memory and thinking abilities. The study looked at[…]
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My Editor’s Choice post this time around is a blog/article that was just published a few days ago. It centers around Baumol’s curse. If you aren’t familiar with that term you will be after you read this article by Duncan Webb. And if you’re really into it you can find it discussed in eight different[…]
Read MoreThere’s always talk about hearing protection, but I’ve heard of remarkably little action by orchestras on the subject. So this came as welcome news: A program to protect Queensland Symphony Orchestra players in Australia from hearing loss is producing encouraging results, according to a new study. Sophisticated analyses of sound dynamics in concert halls led[…]
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It wasn’t until I checked the date on my Macbook while writing an email that I realized that today was the 51st anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I found that a little disturbing, as the realization of the anniversary came to me without my looking it up for years and years.[…]
Read MoreMany years ago I had a colleague who used to say “friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.” It stuck with me, that saying. On the way home from a dinner party at this colleague’s house, my wife Emily remarked “did you notice how often he said ‘they used to be friends of ours’?” I’ve[…]
Read MoreLong-time readers of this blog might remember an article I wrote in 2009 on the subject of discrimination in orchestras. I thought at the time that my survey of the rosters of ICSCOM orchestras demonstrated a marked differential between the number of men and women, especially in principal positions. Someone else has done much the[…]
Read MoreA recent kerfluffle in academia over an academic appointment made – and then unmade – by the University of Illinois to an academic who was accused of anti-Semitic tweets has raised the question of just how much influence big donors have over matters that traditionally were in the sole purview of the faculty and academic[…]
Read MoreAn interest in the law inclines me to surf amongst the legal waves on the Internet, leading to the occasional odd discovery relevant to my day job. This post from the blog Lawyers, Guns and Money caught my eye: Recently Kyle Graham, a professor on the tenure track at Santa Clara Law School, announced on[…]
Read MoreMilwaukee has long been known as the most German city in the United States, and with cause. German immigrants and their descendants were the dominant ethnic group for much of Milwaukee’s history. The last full-time office staff of Local 8, who retired several decades ago, was a gentleman by the name of Al Goetz who[…]
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When and how did the culture of the nation and of music change such that a dominating and occasionally abrasive…