2010 Compensation Reports: ROPA Executives

Although they didn’t enjoy nearly as large of an increase in compensation as their ROPA peers, the average ROPA executive still managed to outpace inflation by a healthy margin. Comparatively, the 2007/08 season produced the highest percent increase in average compensation since the 2002/03 season…

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2010 Compensation Reports: ICSOM Music Directors

For the second year in a row, the average Music Director of an ICSOM ensemble experienced the smallest real average percent increase when compared to the other stakeholder groups. Granted, those figures continue to be skewed a bit since several of the larger budget orchestras did not have a full time music director during the 2007/08 season, but it stands in stark contrast to executive gains in the same season…

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2010 Compensation Reports: ICSOM Executives

If you were the CEO or Executive Director for an ICSOM orchestra in the 2007/08 season, odds are you enjoyed the largest single increase in compensation in recent history. Taken in context, the 2007/08 season was the height of the economic bubble and clearly, most orchestra executives didn’t miss out on the benefits associated with the rise of the executive class…

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AFM Poll Results

Last Wednesday’s poll asking readers if they thought orchestra musicians should leave the AFM produced an enormous response rate; at the time this was written, it had over 500 unique reader responses. The results were fascinating on several levels and since this poll allowed users to select multiple responses, it provided some equally fascinating opportunities for cross tabulation. Read on to find out the recommend fate of orchestra musicians and representation…

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Context, Urtext, Or Just Plain Perplexed?

Ron Spigelman managed to churn up the cultural blogging waters a bit in a recent post entitled It needs to be about CONTEXT not URTEXT!!!! wherein he pushes some tried and true artistic hot buttons. Nothing inspires passionate debate (A.K.A raises the hackles) quite like discussions of artistic nature and the comment thread has taken a life of its own (and includes input from several well known cultural bloggers). Give the …

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