Poll: Does [BLANK] Hurt Or Help A Conductor’s Career?

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Being a conductor is a funny business; prestige and presenting an aura of authority and success are very much part of the overall package for success. If you want to start a conversation fire when you’re with a group of orchestra stakeholders, ask them if they think a conductor with an adjunct or tenure track academic position hurts or helps his/her chances for landing a music director gig at a professional …

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Does Your Arts Org Employer Provide A Company Cell Phone?

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While doing some due diligence on a new business cellular provider (more on that in a few weeks), I found myself wondering how many arts orgs provide one or more group of employees with a company cell phone. As such, let’s see what we can find out. Among for-profit businesses, this is a fairly common practice but it is rather hit and miss for arts orgs. Even that varies from one …

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Poll: What Do You Think About The Numbers Of Students Graduating With Music Performance Degrees

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Last Friday’s April Fool’s post was a genuine hit but it seemed to simultaneously hit a few nerves. In particular, a number of reader replies (especially via email and social media) touched on issues related to the sheer volume of students produced by conservatories and schools of music vs. existing and potential job/opportunity capacity throughout the field. There’s no shortage on discussion about concerns over the music performance graduates vs. opportunity …

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All Sorts Of #TestFail Going On For The “How Much Do You Know About Musicians” Quiz

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Last week, I published a fun little quiz to see how much readers really knew about musician wages, benefits, and working conditions. On the positive side of things, participation was fantastic thanks to nearly 500 readers completing all twelve questions. On the other side of that coin were the results: readers either aced it or bought the farm with absolutely nothing between those extreme grades. [chart id=”8″] As one reader justifiably …

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It’s Time To See How Much You Really Know About Musicians

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A discussion thread from the 2/22/16 article about musician paid vacation time got me thinking about how much those inside (and out) of the field really know about the business. Although information and transparency is somewhat better now than it was 15 years ago, most stakeholders still tend to know a lot about the terms of their own institution’s collective bargaining agreement, but not very much about how it stacks up …

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