Category - Miscellaneous

1
Millennial America
2
Minnesota Orchestra board steps up
3
Us as a sitcom
4
Machiavelli wasn’t a Finn
5
Lessons from the Great Strad Robbery
6
In Memoriam
7
Are orchestras “hostile” to women conductors?
8
A Polyphonic Holiday Playlist!
9
Kitschmastide (with examples)
10
‘Tis the season

Millennial America

Orchestras need to offer compelling reasons for millennials to make live symphonic music a part of their lives.  After all, millennials are the largest generation in human history, and at nearly 90 million people they will very soon make up the vast majority of our orchestras’ stakeholders, constituents, audience, staff members and supporters – and[…]

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Minnesota Orchestra board steps up

Michael Henson will be leaving the Minnesota Orchestra: The Minnesota Orchestra announced Thursday night that its president, Michael Henson, whose decision to seek a substantial pay cut from its musicians led to a bruising 16-month lockout when they resisted, would be leaving his post at the end of August. The departure of Mr. Henson could[…]

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Us as a sitcom

Most readers of this blog will remember the furor over Mozart in the Jungle, oboist and journalist Blair Tindall’s memoir of her days as a New York freelancer. I quite enjoyed it, but some didn’t (especially those who believed that they were featured in the story in an uncomplimentary way) I went onto the Amazon[…]

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Machiavelli wasn’t a Finn

The former battlefield known as the Minnesota Orchestral Association continues its explorations of the very outer limits of the envelope: Musicians returned to playing concerts for the Minnesota Orchestra this weekend, but the turmoil that has followed the organization for more than 16 months resurfaced Saturday. After a homecoming concert Friday at Orchestra Hall, musicians[…]

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Lessons from the Great Strad Robbery

As anyone who’s picked up a newspaper in the last few days probably knows, the Stradivarius on loan to Frank Almond, my orchestra’s concertmaster, was recovered last week and the alleged thieves detained by police: Salah Salahadyn, 41, and Universal Knowledge Allah, 36, arrested this week, are each charged with robbery, as party to a[…]

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In Memoriam

It’s always humbling to write the annual In Memoriam feature for Polyphonic, but never more so than this year. The number of highly accomplished people associated with our field who were also remarkable human beings will be daunting for anyone who’s considered what their own obituary might look like. Many of those who left us[…]

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Are orchestras “hostile” to women conductors?

The attitude of professional orchestras to conductors of a certain gender is a perennial favorite of arts journalists, if not yet an actual Internet meme: Example of Internet Meme: not intended as a reflection of the author’s real feelings The latest example of such journalistic favoritism is an article on the BBC website a few[…]

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A Polyphonic Holiday Playlist!

Happy Holidays from all of us at Polyphonic.org!  Below are a few holiday favorites from our editors: Dr. Ramon Ricker, Editor-in-Chief The Piano Guys perform a creative arrangement of Angels We Have Heard on High! Robert Levine, Senior Editor We all have a few guilty holiday pleasures. Mine is candy cane ice cream. I have[…]

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Kitschmastide (with examples)

Polyphonic has Been Absolutely Inundated (OK; a few requests on Facebook, but this is a business where self-promotion seems to require the kind of spin that would make tennis balls spiral off into the next county) with requests for examples of what I was referring to in my previous post. So here goes. One of[…]

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‘Tis the season

…for lousy Christmas carol arrangements. What is it about Christmas music that leads arrangers into the ugly back alleys of kitsch? Is it simply that it takes a genius to make a good arrangement of a good tune? Copland’s handling of the great Shaker hymn tune in his Appalachian Spring would suggest that. (Speaking of[…]

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