Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house. I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why. In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu. For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

Representative Behavior And The Dangers Of Universalism

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It’s come to my attention through several reader email messages that I have failed to point out an important point in previous articles about Blair Tindall’s new book that what she discusses regarding the free wheeling lifestyle of classical gig musicians in New York City during the 80’s is just that; the free wheel lifestyle of classical gig musicians in New York City during the 80’s. Those depictions certainly aren’t representative …

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Dallas’ New Sales Plan

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The Dallas Symphony has started a new ticket buying program called Impromptu, which is essentially something like a flex subscription package without the subscription. It’s an intriguing idea which continues the efforts of orchestras to move away from relying on the old, tired subscription model. In general, much of the complaints surrounding subscriptions have been centered around time or money and in the case of Impromptu, Dallas seems to be focusing …

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The New Face Of Adaptistration

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Adaptistration’s anticipated switch to the Moveable Type blogging software is now a reality. With it comes a bevy of new features: You can now email individual articles directly to someone via the “email this entry” link located at the end of each post. Moveable Type maintains an ongoing automatic archive of all posts so it will be easier to find articles from the past. You can find the archives link toward …

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Clever Managers Prevent Problems

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When it comes to planning orchestra concerts there’s a tremendous amount of logistics involved and the more venues an orchestra utilizes, the more plans need to be reviewed.  As a result, one issue which appears to fall through the cracks at a number of organizations is on site review, which entails reviewing first hand the acoustic and logistical issues of each individual location. Most organizations do a decent job of reviewing …

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An Early Look At Venezuela

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The Boston Globe published an article today by Indira A. R. Lakshmanan about the remarkable work which is going on in Venezuela.  Indira was along for the first few days of the same trip I recently attended (although Indira left just as I was coming in).  It’s an excellent article which provides anyone with the fundamental information necessary to begin building a picture of what’s happening over there.  In addition to …

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