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From the Orchestra Librarykschnack.wordpress.com/ |
Crunch Time It’s crunch time. In exactly one week the Dallas Symphony’s instrument and equipment truck will be on the road towards the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado, followed by the o...
The Music Trunks Are Not Bottomless Orchestra players, I have your back, you know I do – after all, I am one of you and have spent my life onstage and backstage with you. My job is to support you, and your success is my success. But I...
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night You know how people always say “It was one of those days”? Well, it was one of those weeks. With everything that was going on, I don’t even know where to start. So, like all my German Lutheran aunt...
The Curve Ball Just as in America’s favorite pastime, it’s not a question of IF a curve ball will be pitched to the orchestra library, but WHEN. It’s likely to happen at “the worst time” when you most hope it...
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League Conference June 2009Ann Drinan, Polyphonic Senior Editor, in Chicago |
Friday, June 12 Friday, June 12th [First, my apologies for taking so long to get this written. I spent the weekend visiting college buddies in Madison WI and just never managed to find the opportunity. When I did hav...
Thursday, June 11 Another full day. We started early, with the League’s Annual Meeting breakfast at 7:45 in the ballroom. In the past the Annual Meeting has been a formal (paid) luncheon with a keynote speaker. I...
Wednesday, June 10 Today was a very busy and full day at Conference. I had a lovely luncheon with Dr. Brandfonbrener — we discussed all sorts of health issues plaguing musicians while I played with her little dog ...
Chicago, Wednesday, June 10, 2009 I’m pleased to be here in Chicago at the 2009 Conference of the League of American Orchestras, and to once again blog Conference for Polyphonic readers. (Note: The League’s conference is j...
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Abu Bratsche, Musings of a lead viola operatortheafmobserver.typepad.com/abu_bratsche/ |
Absolutely nothing to do with orchestras Every so often the diligent websurfer will come across a site with which he feels an immediate affinity; it's like walking into a small bookstore run by someone who shares your taste in books. I had t...
The Germans really did invent music The New York Times reports that the oldest musical instrument found to date was recently discovered near Ulm in Germany: At least 35,000 years ago, in the depths of the last ice age, the sound of musi...
Another thinker on thoughts by two thinkers Elaine Calder, President (and CEO) of the Oregon Symphony, had some thoughts in a comment about a previous post that are worth highlighting: Here's one orchestra manager's simple-minded response: when...
It's not just the rowboats taking on water The mighty Boston Symphony, the USS Iowa of orchestras, has started the pumps, according to the Phoenix Network: Another painful day for the culture industry. As Harvard University announced 275 layof...
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Arts Journal MusicMusic News From Around the Net |
At Last, Some Good News: St. Louis Symphony Sees Increases In Audience And Revenue "Though the SLSO performed the same number of concerts at Powell Hall as it did in 2007-'08 - 109 - this season it reported a 15 percent increase in revenue: $5.57 million, up from...
A Grant To Keep Opera Alive In Orlando "United Arts of Central Florida Board of Directors voted to earmark $200,000 for a proposal to keep opera alive in Central Florida" - with a semi-staged opera-in-concert presented by the Orlando ...
The New-And-Improved Alice Tully Hall? Not Everyone Is So Impressed Allan Kozinn: "I hate the new Tully Hall. To me it is everything Lincoln Center and its enthusiasts insist it is not. I find it corporate, sterile, claustrophobic and as acoustically arid a hall as I'...
Things Aren't Really That Bad At The Belgrade Philharmonic That newspaper ad last month offering the musicians' services "at weddings, funerals, baptisms, birthdays, divorces and saints' days"? The orchestra's music director says, "This was our way of drawing...
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Slipped DiscNorman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds |
Musical chaos at the BBC The Today programme, a live breakfast serial of political hard talk and cultural whimsy, flirts daily with on-air disaster but rarely comes unstuck as it did this morning with an item about 80 yo...
Oranges are not the only fruit I strolled down to the South Bank last night to witness a literary award which I had no chance of winning. The Orange Prize for Fiction is restricted to works by women. Originated in 1996 by Kate...
Schiff runs aground A number of people walked out of Andras Schiff's lecture-recital on Haydn at the Wigmore Hall on Friday night, so I'm told. The erudite Hungarian pianist is in the chrysallis stage of morphing fr...
Hilary turns the tables Halfway through a Lebrecht Interview for the upcoming BBC Radio 3 series, Hilary Hahn took control and demanded: 'But what about you? I want to know what you think musicians should be doing in this si...
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The Artful ManagerAndrew Taylor on the Business of Arts & Culture |
Considering the Creative Ecology I had a great visit to Austin, Texas, last week to talk with artists, arts managers, creatives, and other community members. Building on their cultural planning of the past years, they are working to ...
A glimpse inside the Obama arts policy I'm in Austin, Texas, for a two-day conversation on the 'creative ecology' leading to a public presentation/discussion on Wednesday night. So, I'll likely not be posting to the blog this week.In the m...
Of boards, bungles, and the two-headed beast The theater world in Milwaukee is reeling from the sudden announcement this week from Skylight Opera Theatre that they had dismissed their artistic director, and that the managing director would be ta...
Amateur vs. professional The rise of digital media and networked communications is bashing apart the traditional boundary between amateur and professional, particularly in the creative fields. As Clay Shirky defines the 'prof...
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The Rest is NoiseAlex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker |
Hiatus Activity at this blog will subside over the summer while I travel to South America (Festival Malpensante in Bogot?Festa Liter?a Internacional de Paraty in Brazil) and then go to work on my next book. ...
Elbphilharmonie rising In 2007, Justin Davidson wrote here about Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron's spectacular design for the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. Despite delays and overruns, the hall is rising steadily from the...
Marlboro My long article on Marlboro Music, Rudolf Serkin's fabled chamber-music retreat in Vermont, appears in The New Yorker this week. It's available to subscribers, digital readers, and newsstand buyers. A...
No Title The great Iranian kemancheh player Kayhan Kalhor and the New York string quartet Brooklyn Rider play "Beloved, Do Not Let Me Be Discouraged." Part 2 here.
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SANDOWGreg Sandow on the future of classical music |
NOI liftoff Last Thursday night -- June 25 -- was the first National Orchestral Institute concert in which the students tried out the ideas we've talked about here, here, and here. (And, more indirectly, here, to...
Updated dire Hell is other people, Sartre famously wrote. But not in my life, and certainly not on this blog. When I posted my estimates yesterday of how much -- in real numbers -- the classical music audience has...
Dire II Followup to my "Dire Data" post.The National Endowment finds a decreasing percentage of Americans going to classical music concerts. And it's a sizable decline. In the 1982 study, thirteen percent of ...
Dire data I'm amazed, from time to time, to see debates still raging in the classical music world about declines in ticket sales and the aging of the audience. You'd think we'd have settled these questions by n...