Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
In a move away from the typical heavy duty management topics usually discussed in this web log, I offer the following: While reading the article linked in Arts Journal’s main page yesterday about organists in the UK spicing up church services by working funny little tunes into the regular liturgical selections, I was reminded of a wedding I attended here in the U.S. a few years ago. The groom was British, …
The past year has seen quite a few executive directors move around from one orchestra to the next. So who’s been filling these jobs? Mostly executives from other orchestras. Here’s a quick break down of some of the shuffling (I would love to have the time to draw up a little graphic so you could see the almost cyclic nature of this shuffle): Alabama Symphony: Paul Ferrone, an insider who came …
Third and final in this series of how technology can improve efficiency in an orchestra is using recording technology to its full potential. Recordings are a touchy subject among many in the classical music industry. With taboo topics such as aggressively enforced musician’s union regulations, the high costs of engineering the recording, the ever shrinking market of recorded classical music consumers, and the fact that classical recordings rarely make money, it’s …
Second in this series of how technology can improve the efficiency an industry that has been described as a “stagnant service industry that benefit[s] very little, in terms of productivity, from technological innovations” is the use of digital music. This is decidedly a hot button topic for many involved in that element of the industry, mainly the orchestra’s music librarians. If you’ve ever been looking for a way to start up …
Due to the inherent separation between musicians and staff, most orchestras spend a great deal of resources (financial and time) distributing information to orchestra musicians and maintaining communication. This occurs in the form of printing reams of paper for mailings, memos, schedules, maps, as well as hours and hours of labor to collate and prepare all of these documents for distribution. Much of this could (and should) be handled via digital …