Category - Miscellaneous

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The Empire strikes back
2
Cooking the books
3
Osmo joins the party
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Is a tree embarrassed if it doesn’t hear itself fall?
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A Map To Reading And Finding Topics In Harmony: Eight Years of Research, Studies, and Articles
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Hartford Symphony & Chorale on Chinese Television
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Minnesota nasty
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Didn’t work
9
Norman thinks it’s “The Rulebook”
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Dumb s**t conductors say

The Empire strikes back

The shockwaves from the Minneapolis Star Tribune article on Monday are still reverberating, judging by today’s response from the Minnesota Orchestra board leadership. It’s quite revealing, both of the board’s real position and of some of the thinking behind it. It’s also full of half-truths and rather creative constructions placed on their actions and those[…]

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Cooking the books

This is a pretty amazing story: For four years, the Minnesota Orchestra board has walked a tightrope between managing public perceptions about its financial health and making its case to cut musicians’ salaries. As early as 2009, board officers were discussing how much money to draw from investments, and the advantage of reporting balanced budgets[…]

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Osmo joins the party

It’s been a bad week for the management of the Minnesota Orchestra, and this very public letter from their Music Director was was likely the cherry on the cake: Dear Members of the Minnesota Orchestra Board and the Musicians of the Orchestra: In the last few years, the Minnesota Orchestra has truly established itself as[…]

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Is a tree embarrassed if it doesn’t hear itself fall?

This is pretty amazing news: The locked out musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra today announced former music director Edo de Waart, and former concertmaster Jorja Fleezanis will join them for two concerts in mid-December. The news comes one day after management cancelled all concerts through December 23rd citing lack of progress in concert talks. Meanwhile[…]

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A Map To Reading And Finding Topics In Harmony: Eight Years of Research, Studies, and Articles

I have long had a soft spot in my heart for Harmony, which was the house journal of the Symphony Orchestra Institute. In part this was because the founders of SOI had the same curiosity about how orchestras really functioned as I did, and gave free rein to their curiosity in soliciting articles for Harmony.[…]

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Hartford Symphony & Chorale on Chinese Television

I visited SymphonyNOW this morning, the League’s news website, and was pleased to see a video featuring my music director, Carolyn Kuan. I’m a violist with the Hartford Symphony in Connecticut. For our opening concert set last week, we performed four concerts of Beethoven’s Ninth paired with the Yellow River Cantata, written by Xian Xinghai[…]

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Minnesota nasty

Minnesotans are known for being averse to conflict, generous to arts and educational groups of all kinds, and generally plain-spoken (unless, of course, such speaking would lead to conflict). So, on top of the ongoing Minnesota Orchestra lock-out, this comes as a shock, even if not a surprise: The Twin Cities’ distinctive status in the[…]

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Didn’t work

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has pulled the plug on its attempt to emulate the Metropolitan Opera’s successful series of live broadcasts to movie theaters: When the Los Angeles Philharmonic launched its series of live broadcasts to cinemas in 2011, the organization touted it as an innovative program intended to broaden the popular reach of the[…]

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Norman thinks it’s “The Rulebook”

In a post rife with reader comments, Norman Lebrecht thinks the top European conductors are shunning American orchestras because of the current wave of strikes, or because they don’t like rules, or… something: Stumbling into the new season, Minnesota has become the third orchestra to lock out its musicians, after Atlanta and Indianapolis. In San[…]

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Dumb s**t conductors say

Leonard Slatkin has been guilty of cluelessness in public again (a previous example can be found here). He’s actually quite reminiscent of a certain candidate for President currently out on the hustings; he goes along saying quite sensible stuff and then runs completely off the rails and reveals his true beliefs: …Relations between the musicians[…]

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