The French Are Not As Forgiving
Wed, Mar 3, 2010
by Drew McManus
Dan Wakin’s article in the 3/3/2010 edition of the New York Times does an excellent job at reporting on the Moscow State Radio Symphony Orchestra’s working conditions. According to his report, the musicians earn $40 per concert with no per diems and a number of the musicians go on record talking about unsatisfactory working and
Ouch. My Pride.
Tue, Mar 3, 2010
by Drew McManus
Over at Proper Discord, one of my posts from 2004 made it to the #5 position in the list of “30 things that won’t save classical music.” Proper Discord’s author asserts “Classical music doesn’t need saving and the only thing that will increase its reach is for the people involved to do their jobs better.”
Dead Cat Bounce
Mon, Mar 3, 2010
by Drew McManus
For those unfamiliar with the expression “Dead Cat Bounce,” it comes from the world of finance as a way to describe “a temporary recovery from a prolonged decline or bear market, after which the market continues to fall (source)” – even a dead cat will bounce if dropped from high enough. This phrase came to
Who’s Minding The Score?
Fri, Mar 3, 2010
by Drew McManus
It’s official, there is now a comic strip dedicated to the insanity we call the orchestra business. Who’s Minding The Score? will be published (more or less) every Sunday and you can keep track of the satirical goodness at: https://adaptistration.com/toons. The newest toon goes live this Sunday, 3/7/2010 and we’ll be adding supplementary content to
The Pros And Cons Of Cultural Edu-Care
Thu, Mar 3, 2010
by Drew McManus
Inspired by furniture retailing giant IKEA, Holly Mulcahy posted an article over at Neo Classical about the potential merits of orchestras incorporating child edu-care centers along the same lines as IKEA’s Smaland centers. For those unfamiliar, Smaland is a supervised play area where parents can leave children while they wallow in me-centric shopping time. She
Join The RSS Love
Wed, Mar 3, 2010
by Drew McManus
For reasons yet to be determined, Adaptistration has enjoyed a nice spike in RSS feed subscriptions over the past few weeks. This heady leap made me realize that I rarely promote all of the useful RSS options readers have available to follow posts, comments, and comment threads; as such, there’s no better time than the
When Is The Philadelphia Orchestra Not The Philadelphia Orchestra?
Tue, Mar 3, 2010
by Drew McManus
Most folks have likely noticed the news about the Philadelphia Orchestra musicians accepting pay and hiring freezes for most positions along with some hefty pension concessions. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Peter Dobrin reports on those concessions in an article from 2/27/2010. In and of itself, there’s nothing remarkable here; the Philadelphia players are mirroring what their
Venture Project Update: Fun With Wireframes
Mon, Mar 3, 2010
by Drew McManus
The Venture Project has been officially underway for a little while now and one of the first items to be addressed is designing the Creative Control Engine (CCE), Venture’s extraordinary website publishing system and content management component. In short, CCE is how users will be able to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of
It’s As Though You Were In The Room
Fri, Feb 2, 2010
by Drew McManus
QuickTime videos from January’s American Orchestra Summit, including my session, Thinking Outside the Box: Organizational Structures and Strategies, are now available at the Summit website. Based on the segments I’ve watched, it looks like the sessions are presented unedited and although the sound can be a little soft, video quality is good and offered in
So No Hard Feelings Then?