Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
I was recently reading an article in the October, 2002 edition of Harmony by Douglas Dempster that talked about Baumol’s Curse. One part in particular that struck me was this excerpt: “[Economists] William Baumol and William Bowen considered all “service industries,” (e.g., education and food preparation, as well as the performing arts) as opposed to manufacturing, to be vulnerable to the Curse. They single out the performing arts as the very …
Recently I’ve received a couple of emails asking why I keep referring to dynamic and static analysis. The simple answer is because I find that overuse of static analysis is one of the root causes for the lack of innovation in the industry. Here’s a real life example: Orchestra X wants to attract a greater numbers of patrons, especially a younger demographic to replace older patrons. So one plan involves the …
I recently received word from San Antonio Symphony musician and union representative Ron Noble about the results from their New Year’s Gala concert. He said the event had such a large turnout that the gala made money, the concert paid for itself, and all of the musicians were paid their regular union wages. So it appears that the San Antonio public is behind the orchestra, I hope the board will get …
In response to the orchestra in-school program entries from earlier in the week, I received an email from Beth, a cellist in a southwest orchestra. She related her experiences growing up as a public school student and having been exposed to the orchestra through an education initiative. However, her experiences didn’t include in-school programs, only traveling to the concert hall for performances. It made a lasting impression that influences the assessment …
Orchestra musicians are better than they have ever been in this country. And it’s high time everyone started to recognize that higher level of artistic excellence. It’s also high time for us to establish a system of artistic evaluation. Awhile back fellow AJ blogger Greg Sandow wrote about the idea of orchestra competitions. And not the type of soloist competitions that we’re all used to, but between individual orchestras. I think …