On Friday, 2/5/2010 Hawaii Public Radio aired an interview conducted by Noe Tanigawa to catch up on the current status of the bankrupt Honolulu Symphony Orchestra (HSO). The 29:35 segment featured excerpts from separate conversations with HSO Executive Director Majken Mechling and HSO tympanist and musicians’ representative Steve Dinion. Tanigawa did an excellent job at not only bringing out new details since the HSO filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 12/18/2009 (more) but she managed to uncover two items of interest supporting why the HSO might be better off filing Chapter 7…
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“It Is Time To Stop Being The Victim”
Today’s headline is a line from Ron Spigelman’s 1/18/2010 blog post titled Adjusting the Seasonings in Salt Lake! – Time to Make a Play! In the article, Spigelman asserts that orchestras need to move past the self perception that the business must rely exclusively on handouts dictated solely by economic conditions. This is a particularly useful concept in today’s economic downturn as it is far too easy for nonprofit arts managers to forget just how much impact (real and/or potential) they have throughout their respective community…
A Sneak Peek At TAFTO 2010 Contributors
Take A Friend To The Orchestra (TAFTO) 2010 is only two months away and in order to give orchestras interested in putting together a TAFTO oriented event something to work with, I wanted to announce the first round of confirmed contributors.
- Lynn Harrell; renowned cellist and author of the weblog There’s Always Room For Cello.
- Christopher O’Riley; artist, pianist, media personality, and host of From The Top.
- Elizabeth Lunday; freelance writer, journalist, and author of Secret Lives of Great Composers.
20 Hours Per Week
One of the points that came up throughout last week’s American Orchestras Summit was the “musicians only have to work 20 hours per week” comment leveraged by Cleveland Orchestra’s management during their recent labor strife. By and large, the response among participants was it only served a self defeating purpose and it is high time to put the old rhetoric out to pasture. Frankly, it’s a ridiculous statement, right on par with “all nonprofit managers are just hacks who couldn’t make it in the for profit world”…
“Solving All The Problems Of American Orchestras”
That was one of the opening lines from WRCJ’s Chris Felcyn, host of The Well Tempered Wireless, during the segment from his show last Friday where I had the pleasure to serve as a guest (Chris’ blog). I had a wonderful time on the program, Chris is an excellent host who is very passionate about the business and he asked a number of hard-hitting questions. The audio from that entire segment (24:39) is now available at the WRCJ website or you can listen via the clip below…
[audio:https://adaptistration.com/wp-content/uploads/DrewMcManus_012910.mp3|titles=DrewMcManus_012910]