Blog

Ice Bowl

Long orchestra strikes come to resemble a labor relations version of the infamous Ice Bowl; a painful and slow grinding out of points in horrible conditions that caused almost as much pain to the spectators as to the players on the field. Detroit shows some signs of becoming almost as infamous in the history of[…]

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Recollections

Sunday morning I got up early to catch a 7:00 AM flight to Washington DC to attend the memorial event for Fred Zenone. As I had ample time between arrival and the beginning of the event, I decided to take the train, which got me to within a 25-minute walk of the church. After changing[…]

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Another great moment in press coverage

Did you know that there are acoustic termites? Me neither: The vacant Ford Auditorium, once home to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and a hot spot for pop music concerts, famous speeches and theatrical productions before it closed in 1990, is expected to be demolished as early as May… Built in 1955, the auditorium was revered[…]

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Price it (right) and they will come

Say “Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra” to an orchestra activist and the discussion will likely turn to that orchestra’s innovative approach to hiring and firing musicians without the institution of the Music Director. But more important to our field has been their approach to the problem of ticket prices, as described in an article in the[…]

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Conductors say the darndest things

There’s been a certain amount of piling-on in response to comments that conductor James Gaffigan made on his blog a few weeks ago (h/t to Adaptistration and oboeinsight). After providing us with some details of his recent guest conducting, and news of his new apartment in Lucerne, he proceeds to some rather unfortunate remarks inspired[…]

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A Tale of Two Audiences

A Tale of Two Audiences Let’s talk about programming, shall we? Any music director of an American orchestra, when programming a season, is striving to create balance. What does the orchestra need to play in order to grow artistically? What does the audience want to hear? What do they need to hear in order to[…]

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Music medicine can be fun!

… although one might need a slightly twisted view of things to find it so. An article in the September 2010 edition of Medical Problems of Performing Musicians shows us how: …in 1935, trumpeter Louis Armstrong hurt his lips from too much playing and had to lay down his horn for a year. His condition[…]

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Social media and musician activism

This story didn’t show up on the usual arts blogging sites, but it might well have been the most important news for our field in a while: In what labor officials and lawyers view as a ground-breaking case involving workers and social media, the National Labor Relations Board has accused a company of illegally firing[…]

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Grass Growing HD

Color me skeptical: In a bold venture that the Los Angeles Philharmonic hopes will boost its “national brand” recognition and help raise the profile of classical music from Manhattan to Orange County, the orchestra next year will transmit live performances of three of its concerts to more than 450 high-definition-equipped movie theaters throughout the United[…]

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Wassup in Detroit?

The Detroit Symphony went on strike a little over four weeks ago, although negotiations broke down several weeks before that. That puts the strike clock at around 11:45PM, by normal standards – negotiations seem to begin to get serious, during an orchestra strike, after about six weeks. Why is that? Why not sooner? I think[…]

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1
Ice Bowl
2
Recollections
3
Another great moment in press coverage
4
Price it (right) and they will come
5
Conductors say the darndest things
6
A Tale of Two Audiences
7
Music medicine can be fun!
8
Social media and musician activism
9
Grass Growing HD
10
Wassup in Detroit?