Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
On Saturday, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) CEO Stanley Romanstein erroneously announced that the ASO and its locked out musicians had entered federal mediation and by Monday morning, he was no longer the CEO. It is unknown if the mediation gaffe was grounds in and of itself for the shift in executive leadership or if it was part of a larger conflux of events, but what is known is Romanstein resigned from …
In what has become one of the more confusing turn of events in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) lockout, the management released a statement on 9/27/14 @ approximately 9:00pm ET announcing that the organization and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Players’ Association (ASOPA) have agreed to federal mediation. The statement was accompanied by a similar notice at the ASO Facebook page but as it turns out, this was news to the musicians. …
Last month, I tossed out the idea of a new website designed to function like an arts manager version of lifehacker.com and posted a form to solicit feedback from arts managers out there interested in becoming contributors. The. Response. Was. Amazing. In short, ArtsHacker is so happening and we should have something up and running this fall! We’ve got a veritable boat load of folks lined up as contributors you’ll recognize …
Orchestra slogans can be a slippery slope, remember the dreadful Philadelphia Orchestra “Unexpect Yourself” campaign/slogan from 2010? But when they work, they can really stick and give a nice force multiplier boost to overall ticket sales, awareness, and good old fashioned buzz. To that end, the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera (CSO) recently launched a social media call for slogans and/or catchphrases they can use for their 2014/15 season. For now, the …
The public relations campaign in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) labor dispute is unfolding in an entirely expected fashion. The initial one-two combination punch came from the ASO in the form of concert cancellations followed by an infographic designed to reiterate their existing talking points. Perhaps unsurprisingly, both sides of a labor dispute tend to exaggerate talking points throughout the course of a dispute but the ASO’s recent efforts cross the …