Ever since it was published at the end of January, 2012 I’ve been getting a handful of email messages and Facebook notes asking if I had plans to publish a review or any related posts about Robert Flanagan’s book The Perilous Life of Symphony Orchestras. The short answer to that is no, I don’t but there is a recently published review by Bruce Ridge that you might find interesting.
International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians
AFM Poll Update: The Grass Is Looking Greener
When the original poll results were published on 6/4/2010 I mentioned that we would revisit the results if there are any significant changes or an unusually large spike in responses. As it turns out, both have come to pass. Since then, the poll produced just under 800 respondents and that surge shifted the response ratios quite a bit… Since then, a large percentage of those new respondents displayed sentiments toward orchestra …
Should Orchestra Musicians Leave The AFM?
Yesterday’s post on the recommendation by the American Federation of Musicians’ (AFM) International Executive Board (IEB) to give officers an unaudited $10,000 discretionary spending account has generated a considerable amount of feedback throughout social network sites and private email messages. One item that repeatedly pops up is whether or not orchestra musicians would be better served by staying within or leaving the AFM. Consequently, let’s find out what readers thin Sorry, …
Things That Make You Go Buh?!? AFM Leadership
What do you call a $10,000 discretionary spending account over and above existing annual compensation, travel expenses, and departmental budgets? Oh, and did I mention that each executive with the mad money privileges will not be required to make an accounting of what or how they spend those funds. If you’re the current leadership of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), you call it Recommendation #24 for changes to the Federation bylaws…
Something Every Good Manager Knows
Earlier this week, the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ICSOM) published a copy of the comments delivered to the American Federation of Musicians’ (AFM) International Executive Board (IEB) on 7/27/2009 by its chairman, Bruce Ridge. ICSOM describes the comments as “critical of the delayed and subverted process through which the President of the AFM hired the new director of the Symphonic Services Division (SSD).” We’ve examined this issue in two recent posts (here and here) and the publication of Ridge’s comments sheds additional light on what appears to be a growing struggle within the AFM over representation and services rendered.