Although it hasn’t garnered much national attention, a major event transpired over the past week in Hawaii as the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra (HSO) reached a three year agreement with their musicians. For an organization that has been plagued by a series of financial problems and board destabilization over the past few years, the agreement should serve as a concrete commitment to earlier sentiments of cohesion between the musicians and the board.
Month: September 2008
The All New Inside The Arts
The Inside The Arts platform upgrade is almost entirely complete. Over the weekend, the redesigned Inside The Arts homepage was launched along with redesigned versions of non divisi and Scanning The Dial. Sticks and Drones as well as the Inside The Arts Podcasts will be completed in a few days and the all new Adaptistration will be launched by the end of September to coincide with the 2009 Orchestra Website Reviews. All of the redesigned blogs have enhanced usability and the Inside The Arts homepage now features an RSS feed for each week’s Noteworthy and Popular articles.
Speaking Of Conductors
A few conductor related topics today. First, Sticks and Drones co-author Ron Spigelman posted an interesting response to my blog from earlier this week entitled You Say Tomato which examines the use of over-the-top adjectives in describing orchestra conductors. He has some fascinating points that are both analytical and thoughtful. Next up is more discussion on the UK based reality television program “Maestro.” UK culture blogger Charlotte Higgins posted some thoughts …
Seinfeld Was Onto Something
There’s something to be said for the Jerry Seinfeld model of leaving at the top of your game and yesterday’s announcement from the Seattle Symphony Orchestra (SSO) that music director Gerard Schwarz will step down after the 2010/11 season prompted quite a few email messages which referenced the Seinfeld model. However, given the lightning rod quality and quantity of attention the conductor has garnered over the past several years (much of which has been examined in previous articles), most of the email authors were wondering if Mr. Schwarz’s decision is a day late and a dollar short…
You Say Tomato…
Yesterday, I received two orchestra press releases, both of which referred to their music director in the subheading as a "beloved" figure. "Beloved," really? The use of this particular adjective in the context of each PR (announcing the respective orchestra’s upcoming regional tour) projected an entirely self-serving image. Granted, writing creative PR copy can become a bit monotonous but marketing professionals need to be on guard against allowing such grandiose language to creep into their print material. As a tool to combat this problem, here’s a creative, team-oriented way to make the copy writing process more efficient…