Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
There are more than enough sacred cows in this field to go around and if you’ve ever had to go up against one, you know how difficult it is to make headway. Pushback is usually swift and aggressive but that doesn’t mean you can’t think your way through the process. Theoatmeal.com’s Matthew Inman published a wonderfully remarkable post on the sort of thinking that goes into sacred cows, or what people …
Although there will likely be no shortage of post-election bear traps springing up for the field, one area worth keeping a close eye on is labor relations. We tend to spend most of our time here focusing on the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) but one of the other labor unions which wields a degree of stakeholder level influence is the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). IATSE’s international president, …
The 5/21/2016 edition of TechCrunch published an article by Devin Coldewy that reports on a speech given by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) about the gig economy (such as Uber, not musician related gigging) that touches on some remarkably familiar concepts inside the orchestra field. Here’s an excerpt of Warren’s speech included in the TechCrunch article (emphasis added): The gig economy didn’t invent any of these problems. In fact, the gig economy …
Pop quiz: do smaller budget orchestras classify musicians as employees or independent contractors? Regardless how you answered, you’re both right and wrong. But that question is beginning to move toward something more straightforward following a recent decision by the District of Columbia Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals to uphold a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that determined musicians of the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra (LSO) were decidedly …
On the eve of the English National Opera labor showdown, I wanted to take a moment to revisit some research I put together as part of the What’s Working and Must Work session within the 2012 American Orchestras Summit, hosted by the University of Michigan. Titled What The Other Side Gets Right, I invited a cross section of managers, board members, and musicians to answer one of two straightforward questions: Orchestra musicians were asked …