Happy Memorial Day!
Whether you’re home all day enjoying the holiday with family and friends or your orchestra is putting on a performance today, try to take a few moments to remember the reason for the holiday. Band Facts
Year: 2018
Top-Tier Musician Compensation 2018
It’s time to revisit base musician compensation levels at the top eight highest paying orchestras. For a number of these orchestras, the 2017/18 season marks the end of their existing collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and they have yet to ratify a new contract. In each of those instances, the outcomes will have a large impact on what many orchestra musicians consider their organization’s ability to compete for the best on-stage talent. …
#TBT Commencement Season
It’s that time of year when colleges are sending their recent crop of graduates into the great unknown and that means commencement speeches. Based on experience, I try to avoid commencement speeches but every now and then, something really special turns up. Case in point, I posted something back in 2012 about Neil Gaiman’s Commencement Speech at the University of the Arts: Make. Good. Art. Fortunately, there’s an excellent quality video …
When Sanctity Risks Becoming Sanctimonious
The 5/19/18 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article by David Patrick Stearns that reports on a Philadelphia Orchestra concert being disrupted by protesters demonstrating against the orchestra’s decision to carry out their upcoming tour of Israel in the wake of deadly violence along the Gaza border. What caught my eye was Steans’ account about how the orchestra’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, handled having the concert disrupted when protesters interrupted …
What I’m Looking Forward To At The 2018 Association of Arts Administration Educators Conference
Think fast: what’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions an Arts Administration Educators Conference? I can’t speak for anyone but me so to that end, I wonder about how connected arts admin educators are to real-world implementation. Moreover, if any gulf exists, are there noticeable gaps between those with full-time teaching positions and those who teach in addition to working a regular arts admin job. As such, …