You Might Think This Wouldn’t Be A Problem Anymore…But You’d Be Wrong

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July, 2021 saw three articles in traditional media outlets that examine how Asian classical musicians face discrimination at various points in their career. The New York Times published two articles on July 21, 2021. The article by Javier C. Hernández chronicles how David Kim, a violist in the San Francisco Symphony faces what he describes as being marginalized. “In March he resigned as the sole musician of color on an orchestra …

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Academia Continues To Get Called Out By Their Own Stakeholders

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We’ve been talking a lot about academia this summer and there’s another must-read entry that should go on your reading list. This one is from concert saxophonist and educator Lois Hicks-Wozniak, who recently wrote about her decision to resign from all three of her adjunct faculty positions. The reason was simple: lousy pay, lousy prospects, and lack of appreciation and acknowledgement. Along with a pivot into lack of diversity among faculty …

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Humanizing The Impact Of The Pandemic On Musicians

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While it shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that the pandemic has seen numerous arts administrators and musicians leave the field entirely, it’s one thing to look at it as a statistic and something else entirely to humanize it. To that end, Jeremey Reynolds wrote an excellent article for the 7/22/21 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that examines a cross section of musicians and their decision to stay or leave …

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The Classical Music Podcast You Didn’t Know You Wanted And Doesn’t Yet Exist

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Recently, a colleague turned me onto the Song Exploder podcast, which is produced and edited by host and creator Hrishikesh Hirway. The show premise is straightforward: Where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. Hirway takes a deep dive into a single song and often breaks things down even more by diving into specific tracks from the original recording session. Each …

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Shop Talk S02E01: Navigating COVID Era Agreements

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Season 2 comes out of the gate at full speed and my captivating guests include a group of stakeholders from the Toledo Symphony Orchestra who were brave enough to talk about one of my absolute favorite topics: contracts. More to the point we talked about how this orchestra went about navigating the waters of COVID era agreements. We all know about the organizations that decided to shut down and force as …

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