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.
Operations
Take This Audition And Shove It
There has been some intriguing discussion as of late among some cultural bloggers about the audition process. It started off on 4/5/2009 with a post by Jeffrey Weisner at the Peabody Double Bass Blog examining the sometimes slippery process that results in a “no-hire” audition. Weisner’s post is refreshingly candid and offers a valuable glimpse into the audition process. A few days after Weisner’s post, Robert Levine posted something at Abu Bratsche based on his years of experience as principal violist with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (or in his words, lead viola operator). Although each post presents offers thoughtful observations, it is difficult to avoid noticing they both acknowledge some procedural tension between audition committees and the music director…
Job Descriptions: Not For the Feint-Of-Heart
Thanks to Cincinnati Inquirer music critic Janelle Gelfand for pointing me toward the job description for the President & CEO position at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. It just so happens that writing job descriptions is a live-it, breathe-it, and eat-it sort of thing in my Area-51 project so her timing couldn’t be better…
Forget Dress Codes On Stage, What About The Office?
Sometimes your memory plays tricks on you but sometimes it delivers a misplaced treat. I was the fortunate recipient of the latter this week when an article from NewMusicBox.com c. 2004 (which is ancient history in Internet years) popped into my head. Written by Joseph Dalton shortly after NPAC 2004, the author relates his time at the conference and how he could tell which conventioneer belonged to which group by how …
No Pathos For Summer Festivals
Although daily traffic was on par for the blog average, the reader poll from Wednesday, 6/25/08 garnered the lowest number of participants of any poll in Adaptistration’s history. At the time this article was written, the Music Festival Convention poll only managed to generate 10 percent of average poll response. I admit that the low voter turnout on this topic was disappointing and I hope it isn’t an indication that the stovepiping between segments in this business is on the rise. On the bright side, a clear majority of those who did respond felt that summer music festival managers and board members should have their own mini-conference since they don’t usually have the time to attend the regularly scheduled annual conferences…