All Four One And One Four All

Although this doesn’t mean I’d jump off a bridge if everyone else does, I am going to play a round of Meme of Four (which now has a long lineage among the usual blogging suspects)…




Four jobs you’ve had in your life (not in chronological order):

  1. Tuba player in a German Band (fortunately there wasn’t any lederhosen involved, only a Loden Huete and lots of beer between sets)
  2. Orchestra Consultant
  3. First Mate
  4. Conductor

Four movies you could watch over and over:

  1. Blazing Saddles
  2. Goldfinger
  3. A Song Is Born
  4. Star Trek II, The Wrath of Kahn

Four places you’ve lived:

  1. Parkersburg, WV
  2. Burke, VA
  3. Cockeysville, MD
  4. Indianapolis, IN

Four TV shows you love to watch (I’m limiting this to shows which are only in production):

  1. The Simpsons
  2. Family Guy (fantastic music by Ron Jones)
  3. American Dad
  4. CSI
  5. Arrested Development (ok, so I listed five. Send me a complaint letter).

Four places you’ve been on vacation:

  1. Red Sands Beach, Maui
  2. Jackson Hole, WY
  3. Caracas, Venezuela (not really a vacation, but it was certainly fun)
  4. Cedar Point

Four websites you visit daily:

  1. Arts Journal
  2. Woodworker’s Central
  3. Dilbert.com
  4. Engrish (only a daily site by proxy; I hear about it every day from my wife, who does visit it every day)

Four of your favorite foods:

  1. Just about anything Thai
  2. Any of my wife’s Osteichthyes specialties (they’re to die for)
  3. Asparagus (except the tips, I release those into the wild)
  4. dessert

Four places you’d rather be:

  1. Watching a Humuhumukununukuapua’a while snorkeling off the coast of Kihei
  2. A zoo (or cat shelter if a zoo isn’t readily available)
    <LILake Solitude
    , WY
  3. My Shop

I wonder what a list from Joe, Lisa and Patty would include?

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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