The Key To Diversity Is Ownership

Over the last few weeks, there’s been an ongoing examination and discussion here at Adaptistration about some attitudes which are becoming all too common among the board membership and administrators in the orchestra industry; mainly the lack of diversity at the board level and the seemingly willful neglect of cultivating an ethnically diverse patron base.

Adaptistration reader and musician Jerome Harris recently sought out ideas from his fellow 1973 Harvard alumni regarding methods for orchestra outreach to minority groups. He received a number of excellent responses, one of which came from Anthony Cromwell Hill, a filmmaker and writer who lives on Martha’s Vineyard.  He keeps his hand in on mainland America as vice president of the board of the Cambridge Center for Adult Education and has served as vice president of the Boston Lyric Opera.

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Another Casualty In the Subscription War

The once rock solid foundations of rigid subscription packages are beginning to crumble. Actually, they’ve already crumbled, turned to sand, and the economic model built atop of their revenue streams is sliding into oblivion. Unfortunately, most orchestras haven’t been prepared to replace the revenue from those ticket sales or wean themselves off of using that income to pay for current debts. A few orchestras are even attempting to grasp the sand …

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A Done Deal In Dallas

Although the members of the “Big 5” are in the midst of wrapping up their talks, the musicians and managers at Dallas finished their contract negotiations just over two months ago.  I learned about how the Dallas talks went from the DSO negotiation chairman, tubist Matt Good.  He said that the players and management came to a tentative agreement back on July 26th as both parties were interested in getting a …

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The Best Outreach Tool Ever Devised

Composer Carl Stalling was a genius.  The mountain of work he produced as a studio composer for Warner Brothers cartoons did more to educate and expose children to a wider variety of classical music than all of Leonard Bernstein’s young Person’s Concerts combined. I published an article at The Partial Observer which examines the impact of Carl’s work and how it could still be used today.