Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
It should come as no surprise that we create our own demons but avoiding the bear traps gets a little easier when someone takes a moment to point them out. To that end, Holly Mulcahy published an update at Neo Classical to her wildly popular series of parody fueled articles from 2008 and 2009 about the Top 10 ways stakeholders alienate the audience. There are no sacred cows here and even …
There’s a fascinating discussion underway in the comment thread from the 7/19/13 article about the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Specifically, there’s a good bit of back and forth on the issue of whether or not patrons who are still angry and hurt over a lockout that ultimately gutted the musician roster and produced little to no change in leadership should begin to once again support the institution with ticket purchases and …
There is a terrific article by Dmitry Fadeyevin the 7/16/2013 edition of SmashingMagazine.com that focuses on what the author describes as a shift away from “skeuomorphic and stylistic excesses,” or attempts to make an object copy the design of a similar artifact in another material. For example, using realistic page turn effects for digital pages. Fadeyev’s article is a breath of fresh air and timely in light of Apple releasing a …
Joe Patti published an absolutely fantastic article on 3/25/213 that examines the notion of corporate boards inviting artists into the mix in order to help keep the company profitable and healthy. The part that cuts to the quick is Patti’s conclusion where he touches on one of the more fundamental disconnects which contributes to the current undertow of recent labor disputes in the orchestra field. In wondering why [having artists sit …
Prophecy seems to be all the rage right now. All the cool kids are doing it and perhaps one shouldn’t be too cynical; after all, focusing on the future isn’t all that terrible of a defense mechanism during tough times. On the other hand, it can just as easily fuel paranoia to a point where it deceives you into creating a false definition of your reality, thereby making it that much …