Yesterday, I found myself telling a student who had just played beautifully an excerpt from Mozart 41, “Well, it sounds great but you probably shouldn’t use that unconventional bowing and fingering for an audition.” It made me reflect on how the training to become an orchestral player involves such an intense effort to make every last detail the same as everyone else, but better.
Guest Posts
Unpacking Community Service
Author’s note: Over the next five days, I’ll be in Seattle and then LA and during that time I’m very pleased to say that Henry Peyrebrune, Cleveland Orchestra bassist, will be filling in as a guest author. Henry has prepared a three part series of articles examining a topic that is getting a great deal of attention recently: community outreach ~ Drew McManus…
How Did We Get Here?
In a recent post, Drew highlights a remark by author Joseph Horowitz suggesting that musicians should no longer expect that orchestras owe them a living wage, i.e., a full-time salary. I thought I would use my brief stint as a guest blogger to elaborate on some of the history that led us to today’s paradigm of full-time orchestral employment. Was the transformation from 1958 when a bare handful of orchestras paid a modest middle-class wage to today’s 50+ full-time orchestras an accident of history caused by the nexus of profligate national foundations and a greedy musicians’ union, or is there more to the story?
Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste
I arrived at my new job on June 1, 2008, ready to delve into the standard industry-wide issues plaguing Orchestra Iowa: plummeting ticket sales, strained relations with the musicians, immense debt, and no cash to pay bills. Although I had spent several months before my arrival creating a first year outline, that plan literally got washed down the river when two weeks into my tenure, downtown Cedar Rapids, including the Symphony’s office and performance home, was destroyed by massive floods.
Building Concert Halls, Part 3: How to ensure success
In contrast to the “outside in approach” discussed in my last installment, great concert hall design starts with accommodating the essential requirements of both performers and audience, then moving outward in its architectural expression for support areas and public spaces….an “inside out approach”. There is an old expression: “form follows function” which today’s designers of concert halls and theaters would do well to return to their philosophy. And this concept can …