Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
When I invited guests David MacDonald and Sam Merciers to do the show I knew we had to set aside some time to talk about their groundbreaking SoundNotion podcast series, which ran from 2010-2016. It’s the perfect topic for Last Call in that it’s loaded with just the right amount of fun and meta that everyone feels like an insider. If you aren’t already familiar with SoundNotion, it was a podcast …
Just a quick pointer today to Norm Lebrechet’s Slippedisc where he published a letter from Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb to the union orchestra musicians. Along with Gelb’s letter is a reply from the Local union president Adam Krauthammer. We’ll examine both early next week.
The Associated Press published an article on 1/28/2021 by Ronald Blum that examines The Metropolitan Opera’s finances. Nutshell: they saw the same drop in earned income other groups are experiencing but offset that in part by increased unearned income. In and of itself, there’s nothing remarkable there but what should catch your eye is the spin Met general manager Peter Gelb put on that story. “The good news is that we’ve managed …
Guests David MacDonald and Sam Merciers swing by the pod to talk about composers and academia. A fast paced conversation, we cover the intersection of technology and music, how career paths for composers are evolving, ethical concerns around accepting students into composing degree programs, and more. We wrap up the episode with a bit of visioning and I ask both guests if there was one thing you could change about the relationship …
Back in the saddle and one of the first things I wanted to jump into is a report by EY Consulting about the cultural and creative economy in the European Union (EU) before and after COVID-19 (h/t Rainer Glaap). This is one of the first reports I’ve seen that focuses on concrete before/after impact on the broader cultural sector. Here’s how the authors describe the report: What was their economic situation …