Current Events

State Of Employment Poll & Review June 8 – 14

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We’re into our third month of collecting input and with it brings some of the largest shifts in status we’ve seen. Salaried musicians experienced one of the largest shifts while their counterparts in the admin office and musicians at per-service orchestras saw existing trends continue. Weekly Report Responses from Administrators were fairly consistent with last week’s ratios. There was a small drop in the number of respondents indicating they were laid …

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Are You Using Print Program Books This Fall?

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An interesting topic has crossed my email inbox a few times in as many weeks: what do we do about print program books this fall if we return to live events? Good question. While this is probably part of the larger “what will patrons need to feel comfortable in the hall” topic, it does bring up some unique possibilities. The most straightforward option is replacing the entire thing with an online …

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The Murder Hornets Of Copyright Infringement Bots

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Apparently, things were way too easy for everyone figuring out the world of live classical music online content delivery. #sarcasm So, to help keep things spicy, copyright infringement algorithms (bots) decided to use the authority on behalf of their owners to shut down your live stream and/or archived content. The 5/21/2020 edition of the Washington Post published an eye-opening article written by Michael Andor Brodeur on this topic and here’s the …

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Happy Memorial Day

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Whether you’re home all day staying safe and healthy enjoying the holiday with family and friends or your orchestra is putting on a performance today, try to take a few moments to remember the reason for the holiday. To that end, I wanted to include a little something special today in the form of this arrangement of TAPS for solo trombone and trombone ensemble, by Jim Stephenson. I recall hearing it …

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Rounding Out The Week With A Little More Positive News

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Just in case you needed another reason to remember why we shouldn’t let early thinking on COVID-19 topics be the final word when it comes to planning future activity, Barron’s published an article about experiments commissioned by the Vienna Philharmonic that indicate orchestra musicians “faced no added risk of transmitting the novel coronavirus when performing.” While this shouldn’t be the final word on how orchestra navigate the waters of safely returning …

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