Musician Issues

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back For Musicians And Airports

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Adaptistration People 153

Just when it looked like it might be safe to dip a toe in the waters of airline travel, a recent incident involving the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and flutist Jessica Schmitz at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport should bring some old fashioned Jaws level anxiety back to the process. Norman Lebrecht detailed Schmitz’s account in SlippedDisc article from 10/4/2015 and it is a genuinely stomach wrenching account involving what appears to …

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I’ve Got Good News And Bad News About Flying With Instruments

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Airlines

First, the good news: Air Canada recently announced a new program that provides musicians with discounted fares for purchasing an extra seat for an instrument along with advance boarding in order to facilitate finding room in the overhead for carry-on size instrument cases. The details are available at the AirCanda.com website but here are the highlights: Advance Boarding: At the airport, you will be invited to board the plane in advance …

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ICSOM’s Conference Sidesteps Equal Pay For Equal Work And Substitute Parity

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Adaptistration People 163

Toward the end of summer, the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ICSOM), a players’ conference within the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) that represents over 4,000 regularly employed orchestra musicians from 52 professional US orchestras, holds its annual conference and this year’s event is in Philadelphia from 8/26/15 through 8/29/15. Traditionally, ICSOM conferences are a way for representatives from each member orchestra to deliver internal reports, conduct a number of …

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Automate Your Audition Scheduling

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Adaptistration People 155

Not long ago, I began offering Venture Platform users a reservation function via our e-commerce platform that also serves as an ideal tool for arts orgs to use for automating much of the audition scheduling process (including notifications, confirmations, and even changes). Even though it’s designed as an e-commerce function, it can be used in a non-transactional way or even gathering payment info but not processing a charge, which is handy …

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Knowing When You Shouldn’t Get Involved

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Adaptistration People 023

One of the most frequent reader questions coming in from musicians is “do you ever write about [insert musician oriented topic here]?” By and large, although the topic may be fascinating it really doesn’t have much impact from an administrator’s point of view and unless its byproduct becomes something to be attended to administratively (such as the equal pay for equal work topic) we tend to steer clear of those issues. …

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