Although it hasn’t garnered much national attention, a major event transpired over the past week in Hawaii as the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra (HSO) reached a three year agreement with their musicians. For an organization that has been plagued by a series of financial problems and board destabilization over the past few years, the agreement should serve as a concrete commitment to earlier sentiments of cohesion between the musicians and the board.
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The All New Inside The Arts
The Inside The Arts platform upgrade is almost entirely complete. Over the weekend, the redesigned Inside The Arts homepage was launched along with redesigned versions of non divisi and Scanning The Dial. Sticks and Drones as well as the Inside The Arts Podcasts will be completed in a few days and the all new Adaptistration will be launched by the end of September to coincide with the 2009 Orchestra Website Reviews. All of the redesigned blogs have enhanced usability and the Inside The Arts homepage now features an RSS feed for each week’s Noteworthy and Popular articles.
Speaking Of Conductors
A few conductor related topics today. First, Sticks and Drones co-author Ron Spigelman posted an interesting response to my blog from earlier this week entitled You Say Tomato which examines the use of over-the-top adjectives in describing orchestra conductors. He has some fascinating points that are both analytical and thoughtful. Next up is more discussion on the UK based reality television program “Maestro.” UK culture blogger Charlotte Higgins posted some thoughts …
Seinfeld Was Onto Something
There’s something to be said for the Jerry Seinfeld model of leaving at the top of your game and yesterday’s announcement from the Seattle Symphony Orchestra (SSO) that music director Gerard Schwarz will step down after the 2010/11 season prompted quite a few email messages which referenced the Seinfeld model. However, given the lightning rod quality and quantity of attention the conductor has garnered over the past several years (much of which has been examined in previous articles), most of the email authors were wondering if Mr. Schwarz’s decision is a day late and a dollar short…
What They Said
Talk about foot-in-mouth disease, it looks like the comments from Columbus Symphony Orchestra (CSO) executive director, Tony Beadle, have landed the exec in hot water with the music directors over at Sticks and Drones. In a recent Columbus Dispatch article, Beadle stated that CSO music director Junichi Hirokami’s lack of residence in the Columbus area was the source of some of the organization’s problems. Sticks and Drones co-authors Bill Eddins and …