The Funniest 42 Seconds Of The Holiday Season

You know it…

You love it…

It just isn’t the holiday season without it…

The infamous Messiah train
wreck.

Share and enjoy…

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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3 thoughts on “The Funniest 42 Seconds Of The Holiday Season”

  1. Would you please turn off the “automatic play” features of this soundclip? I appreciate this blog, but in a work environment – having to rush to find the “pause” or “stop” key is not appreciated.

    I’m sorry you are experiencing autoplay in your browser but the setting is set to off. I double checked the code after your note and it is indeed disabled, I even pulled the clip up in FireFox and IE browsers on two separate computers and none of them were autoplaying the clip. As such, the trouble might reside with internal media player or browser settings set to override website settings.

    If readers have any additional ideas, please feel free to send them in – I’m sure this reader would appreciate the input. ~ Drew McManus

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