Reader Response: Racist Nonsense II

Shortly after publishing the last Reader Response to this article, I received an email from Jerome Harris, a 50-something professional jazz musician: black American, native Brooklynite, working-class background/Ivy League grad/middle-class income, omnivorous listener.  He wrote in to comment about some passages in that article as well as the ideas from the original piece.

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(Really) Long Term Planning Part 2

To continue where things left off from yesterday, we’re going to examine an imaginary historical scenario and determine whether or not it might supply some possible answers to a variety of long term problems facing the industry today. The BIG Endowment It is reasonable to say that American orchestras can look at their cousins across Europe, Canada, and Australia and see that at least half of their budgets are subsidized by …

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(Really) Long Term Planning

Undergoing long term planning sessions are all the rage today with orchestra managers.  Attempts to go beyond creating three to six year plans are becoming more common.  The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra even decided to create a 10-30 year plan complete with their own unique “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals” (go to page 10 of the document). But what about really long term planning, say 50-100 years form now, is it worthwhile …

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Orchestra Web Sites And Profitability

Shortly after publishing the 1st Annual Adaptistration Orchestra Website Review I received a number of email messages from orchestra managers (mostly from Finance Directors) that all asked a variation of the following question: “How can our website be bad if it makes a profit?” Good question; it’s also a revealing insight into some of the static thinking that goes on the industry (and non profits in general!).  Measuring the success of …

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Looking At Classical Music 50-100 Years From Now

I had an interesting conversation this weekend that really got me thinking about whether or not there will be any large scale classical music ensembles, like orchestra, around 50-100 years from now. As a result, I published an article at The Partial Observer today that ponders whether or not there will be enough public interest to support classical music 50-100 years from now.  Later this week, I’m going to try to …

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