Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
Six months ago, I wrote about a new online database that made it easier for anyone to discover women composers and their music. At the end of that article, I expressed my intentions: to create a similar database focusing on composers of color and “a potential transformation from the current shared spreadsheet to a more stable and intuitive website”. Six months later, I am happy to say that I and my …
2017 is rightly being perceived as a watershed year for women’s issues throughout our society and in many parts of the world. One important aspect of this is the role of women composers in our culture. Just as Hollywood has slowly realized that the number of talented women who can write, direct, shoot, and edit films has far outpaced the number of women being hired to take on those roles, the …
In the weeks and months following the Trump travel ban I received several email requests from composers that were along the lines of the following: “I’m looking for melodies from the seven countries affected by the Trump travel ban.” …or… “[I’d like to write] arrangements of tunes sung by refugees (or more broadly, folk tunes/other culturally significant tunes) from the countries affected by the executive order. I am wondering if you …
Orchestral librarians often show up to work with a physical list of things that they expect to get completed that day. There is always something to be done to meet a looming deadline, but when you feel you’re starting to fall behind, you set aside a day to do nothing but just knock out the multiple projects on your plate. You just know that by getting these all done in one …
The last few years have been big for podcasting. Though podcasts have been around for over a decade old, the launch in 2014 of Sarah Koenig’s hit podcast Serial pushed the medium into the spotlight. Serial received over 40 million downloads by the end of its first season, and the success of this show helped usher podcasting into mainstream life. An estimated 46 million Americans listened to at least one podcast …