Grant Park Music Festival

Kareem Roustom’s New Work Leaves You Feeling Like A Better Person Than You Were Before

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Adaptistration People 176

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve written concert reviews and one of those is only because I was paid. In fact, over the past year, I’ve been in a profound state of burnout when it comes live classical music and with one notable exception, I’ve spent the 2018/19 season finding other outlets to fill my cultural tank. Until last night’s Grant Park Music Festival (GPMF) concert, …

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There Was A Strike In Chicago?

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Adaptistration People 179

In the early evening of Tuesday, 6/14/2016, Lawrence A. Johnson broke the news via an article at ChicagoClassicalReview.com that the Grant Park Music Festival (GPMF) announced that they were cancelling their opening night concert on Wednesday, 6/15/2016 due to a musician’s strike. The Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune quickly confirmed but all of the reports were missing some key elements, such as why the musicians decided to strike. GPMF musicians did not …

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The Latest Report From Captain Obvious

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The 10/10/2011 edition of the Huffington Post published an article by Brett Zongker titled Arts Funding Is Supporting A Wealthy, White Audience: Report that focuses on a recent report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). The article is already making the usual social media rounds but it’s surprising to see it get so much traction when the findings are a) obvious and b) not terribly useful beyond misdirected garden variety class warfare.

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From Reflection To Relevancy: Part 2

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In Part 1 we examined how the Grant Park Music Festival (GPMF) is using an institutional history publication to not only document the organization’s 75 year history, but how it can serve as an effective tool for defining how a performing arts organization grows and interacts with the community. Today’s final installment will look at the book’s production costs and what the authors would do differently if they could go back and do it all again…

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From Reflection To Relevancy: Part 1

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Throughout the business, soul searching seems to be all the rage these days as orchestra stakeholders attempt to justify an institution’s value to the community and the art form in the wake of declining audience numbers and diminished public status. Typically, this process eventually manifests into some sort of institutional visioning and/or strategic planning process, the results of which can be mixed. But before looking too far into the future, orchestra stewards need to look at the institution’s past and one of the most effective methods for conducting a comprehensive review is to engage an institutional history project with the aim of producing a commercial publication.

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