Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
Dear Tony, I watched your appearance as a panelist on the WQXR American Orchestras: Endangered Species? program on 5/4/2011 and became concerned with what came across as a very aggressive and unproductive posture toward orchestra musicians and the basic system of collective representation not to mention the greater field as a whole…
I know, I know, I keep promising my big post but something keeps popping up that catches my interest that I want to post about first. Perhaps it’s some new form of Blogging Adult ADD (BAADD?). Regardless, the first item I want to point out are a pair of articles over at Sticks and Drones from conductor Bill Eddins who has a lot to say about the situation…
Sunday’s Charleston Post and Courier quotes a former board member of the Charleston Symphony as saying “The current business model has proven over 10 years not to be viable.” The recent travails and controversy at the Pasadena Symphony provoked a considerable amount of national discussion, including Terry Teachout asking, in The Wall Street Journal, “What, if anything, justifies the existence of a regional symphony orchestra in the 21st century?”
The 6/12/2010 edition of the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled “The Zero Option; Do regional orchestras still make artistic sense?” by renowned culture journalist Terry Teachout. I was planning on writing something about it but instead, I decided it would be better to reprint one of the reader comments to Teachout’s article…
I’m writing this just after finishing up yesterday’s radio appearance at WNYC’s Soundcheck and I wanted to get some additional thoughts out before they become blurred by the rest of my day. First off, many thanks to the staff at Soundcheck for inviting me to take part in the discussion; it was a sincere honor to talk about such a momentous event in a live, national forum. Additional thanks to Norman …