Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
The always sharp Vu Le posted another entertaining article over at Nonprofit With Balls where he bastes the well-worn topic of nonprofits being told to act more like for profits in his unique brand of sharp-tongued marinade. Le’s post articulates what most arts admins think in the back of their mind when being lectured by some self-righteous leadership figure about acting more like a for profit and seeing it in print …
Now that Cleveland has settled, we can begin to get a sense for how base musician compensation compares across the highest tier of big budget orchestras, which we’ll call The Big Eight (Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, LA, National, New York, Philly, and San Francisco). Granted, we’ll be updating this chart with Cleveland’s figures once that data is available and when it is, it will be interesting to see how they compare with Philly, …
We move one step closer to checking off all the groups on our list of mid to large budget orchestras with expired agreements that managed to ratify a new contract without resorting to a work stoppage thanks to a recent settlement at the Cleveland Orchestra. The three-year deal is retroactive, meaning it applies to the time passed since the previous agreement expired on August 31, 2015. As of now, both employer …
After the last few days of heavy-duty posts, it is time for something light. To that end, there’s a wildly entertaining video out there called Instagram Husband (h/t @LauraKak) that is begging for a parody called Artist Assistants. Anyone who has ever witnessed the life of a personal assistant for a particularly Diva driven artist knows what that pain looks like. If anyone ever makes that video, know that I will …
In Part 1, we examined the revenue end of Groupmuse’s business plan but on the other side of the balance sheet are expenses and when it comes to live classical music, the dominant expense typically involves artistic labor costs. But this is where Groupmuse is different; simply put, they don’t pay the musicians at all for their house party events. Groupmuse’s primary service offering is organizing classical music house parties that …