Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
Prophecy seems to be all the rage right now. All the cool kids are doing it and perhaps one shouldn’t be too cynical; after all, focusing on the future isn’t all that terrible of a defense mechanism during tough times. On the other hand, it can just as easily fuel paranoia to a point where it deceives you into creating a false definition of your reality, thereby making it that much …
The 2012 Midwest Clinic, an international band and orchestra conference, is in full swing here in Chicago. The convention regularly brings somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 conventioneers to town to pack Chicago’s cavernous McCormick Place West for a vast array of education related activity. I’ll be at McCormick Place on Friday afternoon/evening catching up with old friends and colleagues plus squeezing in some business, so if you’re in town for …
Traditions die hard in this field but one of the more baffling practices is the continued use of the term “will call” as the preferred name for the option of picking prepaid tickets up at the box office upon arriving at venue’s box office. Most newbies don’t know what “will call” means and when I talk to box office folks about this, most have noticed an increase in confusion over the …
Following up on the article from 11/20/2012 about the potential for improving workplace satisfaction by way of a service called TINYpulse, I entered into a productive conversation with TINYpulse founder David Niu and the two of us have concocted what I believe is the first project in our field solely dedicated to improving workplace satisfaction. Better still, everything is going to be donated! David is willing to contribute several months of …
Today’s title is a quote from legendary jazz artist Byard Lancaster who died in 2012 of cancer and in the wake of yet another school shooting tragedy, his quote cuts to the quick with the problems related to a society that sees culture as a luxury rather than a basic building block of becoming a happy and healthy member of society. Neo Classical’s author, Holly Mulcahy, wrote about this very point …