Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
There’s a fascinating discussion underway in the comment thread from the 7/19/13 article about the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Specifically, there’s a good bit of back and forth on the issue of whether or not patrons who are still angry and hurt over a lockout that ultimately gutted the musician roster and produced little to no change in leadership should begin to once again support the institution with ticket purchases and …
There is a terrific article by Dmitry Fadeyevin the 7/16/2013 edition of SmashingMagazine.com that focuses on what the author describes as a shift away from “skeuomorphic and stylistic excesses,” or attempts to make an object copy the design of a similar artifact in another material. For example, using realistic page turn effects for digital pages. Fadeyev’s article is a breath of fresh air and timely in light of Apple releasing a …
There’s a fascinating article by Philadelphia Inquirer music critic David Patrick Stearns in the paper’s 7/20/2013 edition about a recent Philadelphia Orchestra performance featuring violin soloist Nicola Benedetti. Stearns reports the heat was so high that the orchestra cancelled a sound-check rehearsal and Benedetti clearly suffered during that evening’s performance. Stearns’ article is timely during a period in the field where work rule flexibility is all the rage during collective bargaining …
Just a short post today thanks to a longer than expected day of travel getting back to Chicago. Take some time today to stop by the article from Euan Kerr in the 7/16/13 edition of Minnesota Public Radio where he examines the mass turnover in musicians at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO). There is no way an orchestra can lose that many musicians and not endure a profound change in …
There’s a fascinating report by Paul Solman about new research from the University of California, Berkeley on how wealth and inequality affects us psychologically. Originally broadcast on June 21, 2013 at PBSNewsHour.com one of the conclusions derived from the experimental evidence is rich people (those earning $150,000+ per year) are more likely to lie during negotiations and endorse unethical behavior. Given the frequency and degree of intense labor disputes in the …