I recently had the pleasure of attending the Chicago Opera Theater’s (COT) recent production of Nixon In China, an opera by John Adams, at Chicago’s Harris Theater…

Work caught up with me this weekend so I wasn’t able to complete what I had planned for today. Instead of leaving the blog empty today I thought it would be good to revisit a popular article from September, 2004 which examines how individuals actually find their way into an orchestra’s board of directors. Within

After posting the Lost But Not Forgotten Update earlier this week, I received a note from a middle manager that used to work at one of the ensembles which went entirely out of business. They wanted to point out that the middle managers and staffers within their orchestra received one of a few options after

The recent news that the Honolulu Symphony will receive a $4 million matching grant from the state of Hawaii is welcome relief for an organization that has been skating on thin ice as of late. How thin? At the end of 2003, the musicians accepted a 20% across the board pay cut in order to

The Lost But Not Forgotten section has been updated. In particular, a recent settlement surrounding the former Florida Philharmonic leaves the musicians with approximately $0.22 for every dollar they should have been paid as creditors in the bankruptcy proceedings. Read more about that situation and as well as updates for the other ensembles at Lost

I’m moderating a Virtual Discussion Panel this week at Polyphonic.org about the expectations vs. realities of winning and maintaining a position in a professional orchestra. Of course, it wouldn’t be quite as interesting if the panelists were all professional musicians, it would end up sounding more like preaching to the choir. Instead, the eight member

A number of readers weighed in with their opinions last Friday…

On average, I’m not the kind of individual that finds most of the humorous content sent to me via email all that funny. The operative word there is “most”.

In December, 2005 I published an article at the Partial Observer which examined the impact Yale School of Music’s decision to go tuition-free for graduate students would have on the classical music business…

Just a short post today because I want to put something up letting everyone know that I’ll be releasing some really fascinating material toward the end of May or beginning of June. I’ve had the good fortune to work with an accomplished systems expert who came up with an idea that should go a long