Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
Charles Noble, the Oregon Symphony’s assistant principal viola, has a beef with newspapers who think “viola” is a typo. At his blog, he points out one of the latest offenses by from the Minnesota Star Tribune, who called violist Sam Bergman (Art’s Journal’s very own news editor) a violinist. I think the problem demonstrates just how much orchestras are removed from the cultural consciousness. Either way, it’s another example of just …
I hope everyone out there who cares about orchestras is taking the time to follow the airline industry pension crisis. It’s been captivating to follow the recent round of Senate Finance Committee hearings which are attempting to gather information so Congress can determine how it should update pension-funding rules. In a nutshell, the problem is some of the largest corporations in the country don’t have enough money in their defined benefit …
In an apparent effort to gear up for their upcoming Washington D.C. conference, the American Symphony Orchestra League has been pounding the pavement and beating up the PR drums in efforts to paint a pleasant picture on the current state of the American orchestra business. Not that this sort of behavior is a bad thing for them to do, after all, they are a service organization representing orchestra managers and board …
Toward the end of last May’s Take Your Friend to Orchestra month initiative, composer Judd Greenstein wrote in to say he was taking 40 friends to an upcoming concert featuring some he composed for the New York Youth Symphony. True to his word, Judd sent in the following account, As planned, I brought a large group of friends and family with me to the May 29 New York Youth Symphony concert …
Given how much youth orchestras have expanded in recent years you would think that the demand for classical music is going up. Unfortunately, that’s not precisely the case in most cities; nevertheless, youth orchestras are becoming a big business. The biggest budget youth orchestras have budgets larger than a quarter of all ROPA ensembles and they attract managers from big budget orchestras. And why not? Those top ensembles pay more than …