Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
Philip Kennicott would like to have a word with you about the state of orchestras; more to the point, he’d like to have close to 4,000 words. Think of it as an orchestral version of The Ninety-Five Theses but replace indulgences with what is perhaps best summarized as new model artistic planning and you’ll start to get the picture. Published in the 8/25/2013 edition of newrepublic.com, Kennicott, a 2013 Pulitzer Prize award …
According to an article by David Hendricks in the 7/31/2013 edition of MySanAntonio.com, the San Antonio Symphony (SAS) lost their latest CEO after not even three months into the gig. The SAS had a series of high turnovers in the top administrative spot following the organization’s bankruptcy in 2004 and they’ve given the top admin spot to executives from Coca-Cola to NASA as well as more traditional candidates. There’s no official …
It’s rarely a good sign when Sunday morning news talk show topics have more in common with the orchestra field than not and it was difficult to listen to pundits talking about crippling impact of congressional entrenchment without seeing parallels in our field. One of the more surprising items was related to reports that one of the most sacred of Federal cows, the Department of Defense (DoD), is making genuine preparations …
We hear the term “new model” so often these days that it almost guaranteed to produce eye rolls, sighs, and mass shoulder slumping. But I’m going to let you in on a little secret: all but a handful of new-model conversations are really just the same old-model wolfs in new-model sheep’s clothing. Simply put, those old school discussions are more about gaining dominant control than sustainability, structural deficits, artistic excellence, or …
Joe Patti published an absolutely fantastic article on 3/25/213 that examines the notion of corporate boards inviting artists into the mix in order to help keep the company profitable and healthy. The part that cuts to the quick is Patti’s conclusion where he touches on one of the more fundamental disconnects which contributes to the current undertow of recent labor disputes in the orchestra field. In wondering why [having artists sit …