Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
The last few years have been big for podcasting. Though podcasts have been around for over a decade old, the launch in 2014 of Sarah Koenig’s hit podcast Serial pushed the medium into the spotlight. Serial received over 40 million downloads by the end of its first season, and the success of this show helped usher podcasting into mainstream life. An estimated 46 million Americans listened to at least one podcast …
The 10/20/2016 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an article by Elizabeth Bloom which takes a Forward 1 Somersault Straight right into the heart of issues we examined earlier this week via the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) work stoppage. Bloom’s article provides additional examples illustrating what is perhaps best described as counterproductive entrenchment such as musician claims that the employer refuses to release economic data for the most recent fiscal year. …
Yes, the third presidential debate was held last night. No, we aren’t discussing it here. Instead, let’s take a moment to examine American’s for the Arts’ (A4A) ArtsVote2016 resource center. Once you get past the user interface, the A4A’s resource is an entirely useful resource when it comes to determining which candidates you opt to support based on their record and position related to the arts and arts education. As a …
One of the advantages of being Editor-in-Chief at ArtsHacker is getting to see what’s in store before everyone else. To that end, there’s a good post on the way about volunteers and it made me think of a four-part series here from 2004 on the topic of orchestra docents and how those programs could grow and evolve into something even more effective than the way most were designed at that time. …
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) recently announced another round of event cancellations through November 18, 2016. Although cancellations are par for the course during a work stoppage, what makes this round of cancellations unusual is they appear to be driven more by brinkmanship than an inability to reach an agreement. Failing to reach an agreement assumes both sides are negotiating but as of now, describing parties as actively bargaining wouldn’t come …