Category - Miscellaneous

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El Sistema Conference: YOLA
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El Sistema Conference: Abreu Fellows
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El Sistema USA Conference Day 1
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El Sistema USA Conference in LA
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Something sure is broken in Honolulu
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The potential of online media
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Step away from the cell phone…
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On Indispensability
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Kenneth McKellar
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NY Times thinks running an orchestra is a real job

El Sistema Conference: YOLA

The conference was hosted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic to showcase their YOLA project: Youth Orchestra LA. On Friday we were bused to the Expo Center, which most of us assumed was some sort of civic center. Instead, it turned out to be a huge Parks and Recreation campus in South Central LA (now referred[…]

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El Sistema Conference: Abreu Fellows

The highlight of the conference for most people was the presentation on Friday morning by the Abreu fellows, where nine of the ten fellows described their two months in Venezuela during February, March, and April, 2010. (Dan Berkowitz was hired by the LA Philharmonic to head up their YOLA program before the fellows’ trip to[…]

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El Sistema USA Conference Day 1

The conference opened this morning (May 6) with an extremely interesting panel discussion on Musicians as Educators: The Many Faces and Approaches of Teaching, moderated by Eric Booth, with panelists Robert Gupta, the youngest violinist ever accepted in the LA Philharmonic and an avid teacher, David Malek, an Abreu fellow, and Arlen Hlusko, cellist, student[…]

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El Sistema USA Conference in LA

Polyphonic will be publishing a lot of information about the El Sistema USA project, covering many of its myriad facets, in the next month. I arrived in Los Angeles last night for “Composing Change: YOLA and the El Sistema Movement” conference. Today’s session, hosted by the League of American Orchestras, will be moderated by Eric[…]

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Something sure is broken in Honolulu

I don’t know that this has ever happened in an orchestra bankruptcy before: U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Faris yesterday denied the Honolulu Symphony Society’s request to extend the period in which it alone could submit a plan for its reorganization. The decision allows the symphony’s musicians and other parties to submit competing plans for the[…]

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The potential of online media

For anyone who still believed that there was significant money to be made in selling recordings online, this chart will come as an unpleasant reality check. A dissenting point of view can be found here. Fortunately, more and more people in our business are realizing that the real value of electronic media to our institutions[…]

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Step away from the cell phone…

A discussion has erupted on another online forum regarding the use of cell phones at auditions. My orchestra has had some very limited discussion about a related issue; the use of electronic devices by committee members, albeit in the context of doing anything at auditions other than listening. But that discussion (which manifested itself in[…]

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On Indispensability

“The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men,” Charles de Gaulle once famously remarked. A rather public discussion of whether music directors can be indispensable is happening over the physical health of James Levine and its impact on the institutional health of the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony. At some point the[…]

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Kenneth McKellar

Most orchestra musicians, in addition to loving the repertoire they play (or most of it, at least), like other music as well – although just what they like varies greatly from person to person. My secret vice is Scottish folk music. So I was saddened to hear that the great Scottish tenor Kenneth McKellar died[…]

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NY Times thinks running an orchestra is a real job

I don’t know if the New York Times has done this kind of profile on an orchestra musician yet; we may need to be content to see one on an orchestra manager. At least they picked a good one to profile: In early 1990, I got a call from the New York Philharmonic, which was[…]

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