This important new book by noted master teaching artist Eric Booth will become an essential reference, “a bible,” to any musician who teaches as part of their career. Booth makes the first of a number of bold statements in the opening pages, claiming that The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible, Becoming a Virtuoso Educator ”…aspires to[…]
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Angela Myles Beeching has revised her well-known book Beyond Talent: Creating a Successful Career in Music; the new edition is due out in November, 2009. Ms. Beeching is director of the New England Conservatory’s Career Services Center, and has been advising musicians for years on how to create a career in music. In essence, she teaches everything you need to know about being a musician except how to play your instrument.
Ms. Beeching was a panelist on Polyphonic’s Virtual Discussion Panel Entrepreneurs in Music, and we are pleased to offer this excerpt from the new edition of her book.
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Gustav Meier, eminent conducting teacher and Music Director of the Bridgeport CT and Lansing MI orchestras, has been working on a book for conducting students and established conductors, putting on paper many of the techniques and musical approaches he has taught for many years. The Score, the Orchestra and the Conductor will be published in August, 2009, by Oxford University Press.
According to his publisher, “Meier demystifies the conductor’s craft with explanations and illustrations of what the conductor must know to attain podium success. He provides useful information from the rudimentary to the sophisticated, and offers specific and readily applicable advice for technical and musical matters essential to the conductor’s first rehearsal with the orchestra.” In addition to sharing his conducting expertise, Maestro Meier also presents a multiple, cross-indexed glossary of orchestral instruments in four languages, an illustrated description of string harmonics, and a comprehensive listing of voice categories, their overlaps, dynamic ranges and repertory.
When I approached Maestro Meier at a Bridgeport Symphony rehearsal about letting Polyphonic.org excerpt part of his book on Polyphonic, he graciously agreed. Even more graciously, his publishers are offering registered Polyphonic readers a 20% discount on pre-orders for his book. (Note: The book will not be published until August 2009, but you can pre-order now.) Please register with Polyphonic in order to use this promotion code.
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If you have read the “about us” area of this website, you know that our roots are with an organization that was founded by Paul R. Judy in 1994—the Symphony Orchestra Institute. As a successful businessman with a keen interest in music and symphony orchestras, Mr. Judy created the SOI with the particularly interest and dedication to improve the effectiveness of symphony orchestra organizations. His interest in organizational change led him to commission Laura Roelofs to write a series of eight articles for the web version of the SOI journal Harmony. The articles describe various approaches to understanding and implementing organization change.
Today Polyphonic begins presenting this series again, and will publish one article every two weeks. But to start us off, and since seven years have elapsed since Laura published the first article on the subject, we asked her to bring us up to date with recent trends in the field.
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The Detroit Symphony Orchestra is noted for its magnificent Orchestra Hall, its extensive discography of recordings, its wonderful relationship with so many outstanding music directors, and its first-in-the-country radio broadcasts.
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The Philadelphia Orchestra – the name says it all. Three equal words. And those words have come to mean “a product of the highest quality.” The Philadelphia Orchestra.
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My college friend and ROPA colleague, Sherill Roberts, has been telling me about Barbara Conable for many years. Sherill is a cellist who had to overcome some pretty serious health issues in her past, and thus she is particularly attuned to the needs of her body in terms of movement. She recently became certified to teach the Andover Educator Body Mapping course, and suggested that I contact Amy Likar, who has taken over as the group leader now that Barbara Conable has semi-retired.
Amy explains what Body Mapping is and how it can help your playing, and then presents a fascinating and inspiring interview she conducted with Barbara.
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Henry Fogel stepped down as President of the League of American Orchestras at the end of June, 2008, though he will continue consulting with the League about fundraising and will continue visiting orchestras around the country. Henry has years of experience in the orchestra world, and he graciously agreed to hold a session for musicians at the June conference, where he explained the structure of orchestras, and how smaller orchestras differ from larger ones. As always, his presentation was witty, laced with many stories, but also enormously interesting and educational. If you don\’t really understand what all those people on your staff are doing, read on. And even if you do, read on anyway!
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In Part II of her article, Barbara Nielsen explores the nature of musician involvement in the governance of orchestras. The traditional and more common approach has been for one or two musicians to serve on the board of directors, representing their colleagues. However, a few orchestras in Denver, New Orleans, Tulsa, St. Paul, and New York City have adopted a self-governing, cooperative model of governance. Barbara explains the history behind these cooperative orchestras, and discusses whether musician involvement will make a difference.
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Christopher Stager, a symphonic marketing consultant and a regular contributor to Polyphonic, had been consulting with my orchestra, the Hartford Symphony, for several years, helping our Music Director, Edward Cumming, put together each season’s program and develop a marketing plan for that program.
The relationship between the two men is a solid professional friendship, full of mutual respect, and the passion each has for music is readily apparent. One evening, in Hartford’s Catholic Cathedral where we were rehearsing a Bruckner Symphony, I noticed Chris pacing around the church, looking very excited. When I caught up with him at the break, he couldn’t stop talking about the incredible acoustics in that space, and how perfect it was for Bruckner in so many ways. Edward joined us and they were off, with Chris describing a similar Bruckner concert series in Toledo, and Edward remembering yet another Bruckner performance, and both of them talking so fast I could barely keep up.
I knew then that I had to get the two of them to sit down and record their thoughts on programming an orchestra’s season. And so they did; the results are really intriguing.
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