Five Questions With Black Orchestral Network Founding Board Member Alex Laing

Perhaps the one thing that sets the Black Orchestral Network (BON) apart from similar efforts is how much importance they place on accountability as a key to measuring success. In their open letter to American Orchestras, words are rarely minced. Systemic issues are clearly identified and after reading through their material several times it seems clear this group of musicians have grown weary of the gap between equity word salad and …

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This Is How You Draw A Line In The Sand

Back in March, I published some early thoughts on what at the time was the growing number of arts and culture organizations cutting ties with artists who are supporters of Russian President, Vladimir Putin. At that time, arts organizations weren’t terribly clear about why they found actions by artists like conductor Valery Gergiev unacceptable. I hinted at posting some additional thoughts about my concerns related to virtue signaling and artists being unfairly …

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A Classy Response To An Ugly Stereotype

The 4/22/2022 edition of cbc.ca published an article by Aidan Cox that examines the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra’s (NBYO) elegant response to the latest outbreak of corporate foot-in-mouth disease. It started with an ad for the 2022 Infiniti QX60 that touts the vehicle’s sound proofing, but does so by pulling out an ugly stereotype. As it turns out, this didn’t sit well with NBYO’s orchestra president, Ken MacLeod “Even though [the …

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Sick Day (Again)

I thought I was past the worst of it and on the way to getting back up to full speed but it turns out this bug had other ideas 🤨 As such, I’m taking another day or two to scale back and will (hopefully) be back in the saddle by mid-week.