Category - Miscellaneous

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Reading the tea leaves in Detroit
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Oops
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The Cult of Youth
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NHMF and the Union
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Klemp, you talka too muich
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Does the Vienna Phil discriminate?
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I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends
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He has a dream
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It's an ecosystem, Maestro
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Nice little pension plan you got there…

Reading the tea leaves in Detroit

Breaking news on the Detroit Symphony today: Talks to renegotiate the Detroit Symphony Orchestra musicians contract have ended without a deal, a surprise since a spokesperson for the musicians earlier said that they were “expecting and hoping” to be part of the solution to the DSO’s budget crisis. “The DSO management team and orchestra are[…]

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Oops

The New York Times raises the question of just who benefits from a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall: Christoph Eschenbach will conduct Sunday at the benefit featuring the Chinese pianist Lang Lang, top, and Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra. Even if the event’s nearly $200,000 worth of tickets sell out, less than $8,000 from the sales will[…]

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The Cult of Youth

Mathew Gurewitsch had an interesting article the other day in the New York Times on The Cult of Youth: IN the world of the contemporary symphony orchestra, youth is not so much a stage of life as it is a battle cry. Youth orchestras! Young conductors! At times it begins to seem that nothing else[…]

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NHMF and the Union

The March 2010 edition of the International Musician, the official publication of the AFM, contained news of the AFM’s most recent success in influencing a recalcitrant employer: Several managers and directors of New Hampshire Music Festival (NHMF) have left their posts, following overwhelming opposition to their plans to implement a “new artistic model” for the[…]

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Klemp, you talka too muich

That was the punch line of what is likely an apocryphal story about an interaction between the great German conductor Otto Klemperer and an Italian principal oboe. Sadly, Klemp is not alone. It must be hard to be a conductor, and I don’t mean that sarcastically. But one of the hardest things – judging by[…]

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Does the Vienna Phil discriminate?

The Vienna Philharmonic is touring the UK, and The Independent has re-visited the question of whether the orchestra discriminates on the basis of gender or national origin: Bernstein called it “that unbelievable orchestra, which plays like one hundred angel-fingers growing out of my hands”. Yet once Stravinsky immolates into silence, pause, for before you is[…]

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I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends

The article that follows my comments is from The Minnesota Daily, the newspaper of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis/St. Paul.  It’s the first in a series profiling drug use on the UMinn. campus, and they start with music students. Since the readers of Polyphonic.org are familiar with the orchestra world, it will be no surprise[…]

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He has a dream

The General Director of the San Francisco Opera has a vision for the future of the company, and it’s…a multi-storied annex? David Gockley has a dream, and it’s to transform a parking lot behind the Veterans Building into a multi-storied annex for the San Francisco Opera. Of course, like any dream, there is a reality[…]

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It's an ecosystem, Maestro

Riccardo Muti, who last week taught us (and the Met Opera orchestra) about Verdi, this week is teaching us about the value of some American orchestras: The Riccardo Muti era at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra officially began Thursday at Symphony Center, as the CSO’s 10th music director announced plans for his first season. He did[…]

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Nice little pension plan you got there…

It’d be a a shame if something happened to it. Oh wait… something just did: The Pension Protection Act of 2006 requires the funding “zone status” for defined benefit multiemployer plans like the American Federation of Musicians and Employers’ Pension Fund (the “Plan”) to be certified each year by the plan’s actuary. The actuary for[…]

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