Category - Miscellaneous

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News from the North
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A Timpanist’s Memoirs
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Fun with Financing in Nashville
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21st Century Musicians: New Pathways
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Ghosts
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The Coolest Band in the World
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Big Tent Thinking
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Are dinosaurs falling? Are deficits “structural”?
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So, who’s your funder? And other crazy questions…
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Can an Alien Save the American Orchestra? –Thoughts on “The New Model”

News from the North

There have been been several developments in the Twin Labor Disputes in the State Least Likely To Experience Labor Disputes (Or At Least Not-Nice Ones). None of them offer much visible hope for quick resolution of either situation. On the Minnesota Orchestra front, Graydon Royce of the Minneapolis StarTribune, who has done as good a[…]

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A Timpanist’s Memoirs

Thomas Akins, Principal Timpanist with the Indianapolis Symphony from 1965 to 1991, has published his memoirs, Behind the Copper Fence: A Lifetime on Timpani. His book is filled with reminisces about his many years with the Indianapolis Symphony, his training as a timpanist, including seven summers (1960-66) in the League’s Institute for Orchestral Studies with[…]

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Fun with Financing in Nashville

Some rather alarming headlines have appeared in the past few days in the Nashville Press, the best of which was WDEF’s Nashville Symphony Mired in Debt: The Nashville Symphony is in danger of defaulting on $102 million in bonds that were used to build the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. Symphony CEO and President Alan Valentine told[…]

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21st Century Musicians: New Pathways

We are all prone to plateau in our endeavors, because we don’t have such constant critical prodding and feedback. So our tennis, golf, snooker, running, weightlifting attain a certain level, but then get stuck.

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Ghosts

Why do we love terrifying ourselves? I am sure we’ve all experienced those spine-tingling moments as a child telling the most frightening stories late at night when parents are asleep.

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The Coolest Band in the World

The Berliners’ model should lead us all to imagine more flexible and responsible organizations that have music as their mission, and the community as their foundation.

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Big Tent Thinking

History is filled with people who have tried to define art.  They have all been wrong, and there is no reason to suspect we are any better at it than they were. Changes to what experts call “Art” happen all the time.  There was a time when people questioned whether photography constituted fine art.  Some[…]

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Are dinosaurs falling? Are deficits “structural”?

NPR had a story yesterday morning on Morning Edition that, rather than commit what used to be considered journalism, rounded up the usual suspects on the subject of whether orchestras in their current form are unsustainable (come to think of it, he said/he said different is what’s considered journalism these days): 2012 will go down[…]

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So, who’s your funder? And other crazy questions…

Question: What have you learned in the past few years about about obtaining sustainable funding? In this monthly blog, I’ll start with a question, and take on issues of leadership and relevance in advancing the cause of music and social change.  I’d like to start with an example I’m very familiar with – the model[…]

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Can an Alien Save the American Orchestra? –Thoughts on “The New Model”

American Orchestras, so we are told over and over again, are on life-support. Audiences are aging or dwindling; “operating expenses” (often a euphemism for “musician salaries and benefits”) are rising; fundraising has reached a ceiling; Apple and Amazon exist; people just aren’t as “educated” about classical music as they were; public music education programs are[…]

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