You have to love serendipity. A few months ago, I came across a new release in my neighborhood book store, Secret Lives of Great Composers: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the World’s Musical Masters
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Build a Private Teacher Outreach Program You Can Be Proud Of
Bill Eddins posted an excellent article called “The Missing Piece” on 12/13/2009 which espouses the idea that in conjunction with significant financial gifts (think eight figures) “each and every member of the orchestra commits to going into the community and teaching deserving students for four hours a week…for free.” In response to Bill’s piece, I posted a comment suggesting that in order to promote the study of musical instruments (as he suggests) but in the absence of significant financial gifts, there is a great deal of untapped opportunity for orchestras to build meaningful relationships with existing private music teachers…
Welcome Midwest Conventioneers!
The 2009 Midwest Clinic, an international band and orchestra conference, is in full swing here in Chicago. The convention regularly brings somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 conventioneers to town for a vast array of education related activity (full list). I’ll be attending the convention today, Wednesday, 12/15/2009 meeting with clients, colleagues, and friends and likely again on Thursday and Friday. If you would like to arrange a time to meet, you can call or txt my cell at 708-990-0408, send an email, or call my office at 708-445-2675.
The First Step Toward Cultivating The Fruit Of Social Media
On Monday, 12/14/2009, Marc van Bree published an article at his blog, Dutch Perspective, announcing the results from his Orchestras and Social Media survey. In addition to a downloadable copy of the full report, there’s an excellent slide presentation on the key findings and recommendations. Van Bree’s survey is the first I’m aware of that focuses on defining how orchestras use social media as well as collecting and cross tabulating details about budgets, resource allocation, and benchmarking…
A Scenario Of “Bad Things?”
In case you missed the big news from last week, Cincinnati arts patron and philanthropist Louise Nippert announced that she is giving Cincinnati arts organizations $85 million. According to Cincinnati Enquirer music critic, Janelle Gelfand, Nippert’s gift is the largest “single gift by an individual to a Cincinnati arts organization.” Flying under the radar of this momentous news for Cincinnati’s arts scene is a quote from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) president claiming that without the gift, the CSO was facing scenario of “bad things”…