Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
The 8/3/21 edition of The Baltimore Sun published an article by Mary Carole McCauley that reports on the orchestra’s decision to dismiss Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) principal flutist Emily Skala. This situation appears to be one of those rare instances where a musician employee is dismissed for non-artistic reasons. Skala has made headlines a few times over the pandemic as a result of her decisions to speak out on social media …
While it’s heartening to see nonprofit performing arts organizations demonstrate an ability to roll with the punches throughout the pandemic, it’s good to see municipalities begin to step in and provide guidance in the wake of the latest variant,. New York City will become the first city to require vaccinations for indoor activities, which include concerts. According to an 8/2/21 article in Rolling Stone by Jon Blistein, NYC’s plan is to …
July, 2021 saw three articles in traditional media outlets that examine how Asian classical musicians face discrimination at various points in their career. The New York Times published two articles on July 21, 2021. The article by Javier C. Hernández chronicles how David Kim, a violist in the San Francisco Symphony faces what he describes as being marginalized. “In March he resigned as the sole musician of color on an orchestra …
We’ve been talking a lot about academia this summer and there’s another must-read entry that should go on your reading list. This one is from concert saxophonist and educator Lois Hicks-Wozniak, who recently wrote about her decision to resign from all three of her adjunct faculty positions. The reason was simple: lousy pay, lousy prospects, and lack of appreciation and acknowledgement. Along with a pivot into lack of diversity among faculty …
While it shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that the pandemic has seen numerous arts administrators and musicians leave the field entirely, it’s one thing to look at it as a statistic and something else entirely to humanize it. To that end, Jeremey Reynolds wrote an excellent article for the 7/22/21 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that examines a cross section of musicians and their decision to stay or leave …