Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
In the wake of the Metropolitan Opera’s PR disaster that is the James Levine disgrace, the field as a whole has a debt to pay with owning up to and dismantling the Maestro Mystique culture it worked to build and perpetuate over the last 70 years. There’s a superb article in the 3/13/18 edition of the New York Times by Zachary Woolfe that examines this very issue. For those unaware, conductors …
The 2/13/18 edition of the Indianapolis Business Journal has an article by Lindsey Erdody following up on an issue at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (ISO) involving a former principal musician’s lawsuit that alleged age discrimination and harassment. We examined that issue in March of 21017 when the news broke and according to the IBJ article, the ISO has settled with the musician and while the terms are undisclosed, we do know …
Read moreCommentary: It’s Time To Begin Clawing Back Compensation
Over the weekend, the New York Post published an article by Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein that reports on a Lake Forest, IL police report that accuses conductor and Metropolitan Opera (Met) Music Director James Levine of alleged child molestation. A host of additional outlets followed up with their own accounts in the wake of the NY Post’s bombshell article. Update: The Met has formally suspended Levine and released additional details …
Read moreMight Makes Right: A Predator’s Paradise (Update: Met Suspends Levine)
Just when you thought things were settling into the “quietly fade away” phase, the Oregon Bach Festival’s (OBF) public relations crisis flared right back up. The latest outbreak surrounds a document obtained as part of a public records request from Eugene Weekly. The 11/14/2017 edition of the Eugene Weekly published an article by Bob Keefer which reports the contents of the letter suggest former artistic director Matthew Halls was being investigated …
Read moreThe Oregon Bach Festival’s PR Crisis Just Got Weird
Norman Lebrecht published an interesting post at slippedisc.com that notices the trend in conductors holding multiple titled positions is in no danger of going away; at least in North America. We used to include pointing out conductors who held positions at multiple orchestras as part of the annual music director compensation reports but over the years, it has played a reduced role. The entire notion of music director compensation enters a …
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