Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
Shortly after publishing the 1st Annual Adaptistration Orchestra Website Review I received a number of email messages from orchestra managers (mostly from Finance Directors) that all asked a variation of the following question: “How can our website be bad if it makes a profit?” Good question; it’s also a revealing insight into some of the static thinking that goes on the industry (and non profits in general!). Measuring the success of …
I had an interesting conversation this weekend that really got me thinking about whether or not there will be any large scale classical music ensembles, like orchestra, around 50-100 years from now. As a result, I published an article at The Partial Observer today that ponders whether or not there will be enough public interest to support classical music 50-100 years from now. Later this week, I’m going to try to …
I received a number of wonderful responses from the Bunch Of Racist Nonsense article published from last Wednesday. As with most issues that generate a good deal of responses there are always some surprises, and this was no exception.
Many messages were from orchestra managers (wishing to remain anonymous) who expressed varying degrees of disappointment and aggravation over the fact that their respective orchestra boards do a very poor job at reflecting the diversity of their community.
The current round of negotiations certainly has everyone’s attention in the here and now, but how will the outcome of these settlements influence orchestra’s negotiations in the following years? There are several orchestras slated to begin contract negotiations next year that are in very similar financial straits to the orchestras currently negotiating. Take for example, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. At the beginning of September, I published a couple of articles about …
A recent article in the San Antonio Express-News inspired me to write about an issue that’s been steadily growing in my mind.
I’ve been bothered to see an increasing trend in this industry by some to explain away the declining audience base for classical music: that some immigrant and minority communities aren’t interested in classical music because their respective cultures don’t have a traditional relationship with it.
Nonsense!