A friend of mine alerted me last week to a recent series of events at the New Hampshire Music Festival. I’ve been trying to make sense of what I’ve read in news articles, on the Festival musicians’ website, and from a outside organization of dissident supporters called SOON (Save Our Orchestra Now). The only adequate[…]
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I think the principal violist should sit to the conductor’s immediate left. Mozart’s life in 5 seconds, as seen by Hollywood. Lots of people still want to be opera stars. I’m glad one orchestra recognizes that technology might make the audition process better (and greener). Norman thinks that the Met is a wuss. He doesn’[…]
Read MoreHow depressing, another world-class orchestra is struggling. How sustainable is our current idea of the Symphony Orchestra?
The Indianapolis Symphony just reported a substantial deficit: A year of declining contributions and ticket sales left the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra with a $2.8 million deficit. Symphony officials say its current budget has been cut by $3 million, to $26 million, in part through a 12 percent pay cut accepted by musicians in a new[…]
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This past week the Broadway show “Chicago,” was in Rochester. It was the national touring production, and I contracted it and also played it. It’s a great show. Those Bob Fosse choreographed dance segments are spectacular. What a genius that man was. His choreography is unmistakable. Talk about having a style! The music is 1920’s[…]
Read MoreA common feature on blogs is a “tab dump.” It’s a play on the old programming term “core dump”; a printout of the contents of a computer’s memory intended to help figure out why a program blew up.
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As a non-playing orchestra librarian (well, mostly anyway), I don’t get to hear the orchestra on stage as much I did when playing more often and in the midst of the music. Yes, we always have the monitor on so we “hear” the rehearsals and concerts, but that’s clearly not the same as either participating[…]
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When I wrote the following on “From the Orchestra Library” I didn’t realize Robert had posted the video of a young accordion virtuoso playing the last movement of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto back in September. So, here’s a little view into orchestra librarians’ minds when they see such a thing:
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I’m a relative newbie to FaceBook, and continue to be amazed by what gets put up there by friends (both real ones and the FaceBook kind). I’ve seen wonderfully funny things, very suggestive self-portraits, blow-by-blow accounts of childbirth, and countless examples of Too Much Information. If blogging is the Internet’s Ego, then Facebook is its[…]
Read MoreAnne Midgette, Washington Post music critic, has her own take on the Michael Kaiser article of a few days ago: Michael Kaiser, in the Huffington Post, has this week addressed the elephant in the living room: some orchestras are not going to make it. There are striking parallels between orchestras and newspapers in this recession.[…]
Read MoreEvery year I look down in late August when we start our season, and by the time I am able to look up and catch a breather, it’s almost the end of October. And every year I say it’s not going to happen this year, that I will take more time to get out of[…]
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Polyphonic.org – When the excellent becomes the enemy of everything
[...] doing some research on the New Hampshire Music Festival situation, I came across a blog post by Henry Fogel…