Drew McManus on the Orchestra business | est. 2003

Axelrod Collection Value Determined By Attitude

Fri, Dec 12, 2004
Adaptistration People 125
The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra released a 66 page report from their Trustee Review Panel regarding the collection of string instruments purchased from Herbert Axelrod. The report will be examined in detail next week, in the meantime, here’s the initial paragraph from the report’s conclusion: “As emphasized earlier, the true value of the instruments for

What Orchestras Can Learn From Mega Stores

Thu, Dec 12, 2004
Fellow AJ blogger, Martha Bayles, published an interesting piece yesterday.  It focuses on the mass marketing efforts by two large mega corporations which sell entertainment media: Blockbuster Video and Barnes & Noble booksellers. Martha examines how online and mail order video rental services are taking a noticeable bite out of Blockbuster’s bottom line.  One of

Virtual Disaster

Wed, Dec 12, 2004
It appears that the cold war between the makers of the Sinfonia virtual orchestra device and representative of New York City Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians is heating up again, and it’s doing so on the same battleground as before, the Opera Company of Brooklyn. Like most wars that result in an

Fun With Numbers

Tue, Dec 12, 2004
Now that a number of orchestras have released their deficit/surplus information of the 2003-2004 season it is interesting to look at those figures in a different way. For the 03-04 season the following major orchestras break down their losses or gains in the follow manner:   Cleveland (deficit) Milwaukee (deficit) Buffalo (deficit) Seattle (surplus) Year

What Do You Do With $32 Million You Can’t Deduct?

Mon, Dec 12, 2004
  The latest chapter in the “Made for T.V.” saga that is the Herbert Axelrod scandal was his pleading guilty last week to helping a former employee file a fraudulent federal tax return. As part of that guilty plea Axelrod must file a 2003 tax form but is not allowed to claim a $32 million