Drew McManus on the Orchestra business | est. 2003

Drew McManus

Academia Continues To Get Called Out By Their Own Stakeholders

Mon, Aug 8, 2021
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,

Humanizing The Impact Of The Pandemic On Musicians

Fri, Jul 7, 2021
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

The Classical Music Podcast You Didn’t Know You Wanted And Doesn’t Yet Exist

Wed, Jul 7, 2021
Recently, a colleague turned me onto the Song Exploder podcast, which is produced and edited by host and creator Hrishikesh Hirway. The show premise is straightforward: Where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. Hirway takes a deep dive into a single song and often

Shop Talk S02E01: Navigating COVID Era Agreements

Tue, Jul 7, 2021
Season 2 comes out of the gate at full speed and my captivating guests include a group of stakeholders from the Toledo Symphony Orchestra who were brave enough to talk about one of my absolute favorite topics: contracts. More to the point we talked about how this orchestra went about navigating the waters of COVID

No One Can Force You To Make Good Choices

Mon, Jul 7, 2021
If there’s one thing the pandemic has demonstrated, it is agreements aren’t nearly as rigid as conventional wisdom dictates. At the same time, they’re only as flexible as the people involved, the choices they make, and the process they embrace. Tomorrow’s post will be the inaugural episode for Season 2 of Shop Talk, it features
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