So we’ve all agreed that community outreach should be guided by a clear knowledge of our audiences, our playing should touch people at a deep level and we should build on this knowledge and experience to strengthen our relationships with the people in our community – and we’ve thrown out the idea of models – we’re going to build the orchestra and relationships that are perfect for our own communities. Everyone’s nodding, right?
Year: 2011
No Models, Please
Yesterday, I found myself telling a student who had just played beautifully an excerpt from Mozart 41, “Well, it sounds great but you probably shouldn’t use that unconventional bowing and fingering for an audition.” It made me reflect on how the training to become an orchestral player involves such an intense effort to make every last detail the same as everyone else, but better.
Unpacking Community Service
Author’s note: Over the next five days, I’ll be in Seattle and then LA and during that time I’m very pleased to say that Henry Peyrebrune, Cleveland Orchestra bassist, will be filling in as a guest author. Henry has prepared a three part series of articles examining a topic that is getting a great deal of attention recently: community outreach ~ Drew McManus…
Former DSO Director Goes Public With Concerns
I received a copy of a letter from Sandra Reitelman, the former Director of Corporate Fundraising for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) from 2004-2006. In her letter, Reitelman characterizes “an incomplete ability to draw audiences and financial support” resulting from specific limitations within the workplace environment as a cornerstone for the ongoing institutional troubles. At the same time, she is careful to say that she is not speaking of “mismanagement of finances, or of board negligence”…
Terry Teachout Couldn’t Be More Right
After a stretch of swing-and-a-miss articles from the venerable Terry Teachout, he connected with a big hit in his Wall Street Journal article from 3/18/2011 where he ponders the ironic nature of the Cleveland Orchestra’s (CO) “critic-in-residence.” Teachout accurately characterizes the CO’s efforts as an institutional blog and subsequently points out all of stereotypical bear traps attached to those efforts rattling around the blog’s ankles… For starters, Teachout takes issue with …