Drew McManus on the Orchestra business | est. 2003

Forget Dress Codes On Stage, What About The Office?

Wed, Jul 7, 2008
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

Cross-Blogging On Summer Festivals And More

Tue, Jul 7, 2008
In response to a post here from 6/27/2008 on the impact of rising gas prices on summer music festivals, my Inside The Arts blogging neighbor, Jason Heath, posted an excellent companion piece. In his article, Jason takes the time to provide far more detail regarding some of the issues that musicians tend to consider when

Strength In Numbers

Mon, Jul 7, 2008
Lisa Hirsch over at The Iron Tongue Of Midnight posted an intriguing article on 7/4/2008 which examines a curious piece by music critic Martin Bernheimer which appeared in the 7/5/2008 edition of the Financial Times. In his article, Bernheimer blames the decline of regularly employed traditional music critics on the proliferation of bloggers. I call

Changes Afoot

Fri, Jul 7, 2008
Throughout the month of July, Adaptistration and its companion blogs will be moving to a new blogging platform. It hasn’t even been a full year since moving to an independent server and we already require more space, better control, and enhanced tools. If growth is any measure of success then all of the blogs and

Do Preview Clips Sell Tickets?

Thu, Jul 7, 2008
I had a fascinating conversation yesterday with someone in the business about whether or not preview audio clips have any impact on selling concert tickets. Conventional wisdom would dictate that giving people a sample of something before they buy is usually a good thing and clips via an orchestra’s website has any measurable impact on

Powerful New Development Tools

Wed, Jul 7, 2008
The 6/28/2008 edition of HuffingtonPost.com featured an article by Julia Moulden which focused on BringLight.com, an online service that makes it easy for donors to contribute to 501(c)3 charitable organizations. I’ve been meaning to write a series of articles about Bring Light for half a year now and there simply isn’t a good excuse as

A Must Read

Tue, Jul 7, 2008
If you haven’t read John Fleming’s article in the 6/29/2008 edition of the St. Petersburg Times that chronicles the story of violinist Stewart Kitts then you’re missing out. At a time when newspapers appear to be shedding salaried music critics and cultural reporters, it is heartening to see a paper reaffirm the value of such

Sometimes, The Best Parallel Is Perpendicular

Mon, Jun 6, 2008
A few months ago I had an intriguing email exchange with Erik Hanberg, former Managing Director of the Grand Cinema, a non-profit art-house movie theater in downtown Tacoma, WA. We were discussing the similarities and differences between the field of orchestra management and art-house movie theaters and he shared an instance from his time managing

No Pathos For Summer Festivals

Fri, Jun 6, 2008
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

Drunk Driver Convicted In Deaths Of Musicians Sentenced

Thu, Jun 6, 2008
16 months after her car struck and killed Eugene Symphony musicians Kjersten Oquist and Angela Svendsen, convicted drunk driver Fivea Sharipoff was sentenced to 16 years and eight months in prison by Circuit Judge John McCormick. Earlier this month, Sharipoff was found guilty on two counts of manslaughter in the first degree for the deaths
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