Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
In an 11/25/2013 article from The New Yorker, the ever sharp Alex Ross vents some frustration toward the Minnesota Orchestra Association (MOA) leadership, the growing difficulty of mid and smaller budgets org to pull funding from the name brand institutions, and the ennui that is political concerns about culture. Ross doesn’t mince words and goes so far as to accuse the MOA management of “stoop[ing] to ruthless union-busting tactics” and calling …
It’s been a busy week for tough news and in addition to keeping tabs here at Adaptistration Kathy Wurzer from MPR’s Morning Edition was kind enough to invite me onto the program on 10/2/13 to chat about what’s in store at the Minnesota Orchestra Association (MOA). An edited transcript and full audio are available at the MPR website and this Sunday, 10/6/13, the crew from SoundNotion.tv have invited me on the …
Yesterday’s news about the impending liquidation of the New York City Opera (NYCO) isn’t much of a surprise to anyone who has followed the group over the past several years. If anything, it might be curious to some why the group decided to prolong and even intensify its suffering and extend the misery to the field as a whole, not unlike a zombie shuffling around spreading fear and doom among arts …
Is the New York City Opera (NYCO) muddying the waters for nonprofit performing arts groups with their current Kickstarter campaign? Ever since the NYCO announced its Kickstarter campaign to raise $1 million to “produce a 2013–2014 season” a number of colleagues have contacted me expressing concerns that the broad all or nothing fundraising campaign violates Kickstarter’s fundraising guidelines. According to Kickstarter’s funding platform for creative projects, a project is defined as …
Hot on the heels of massive concessions won in spite of widespread and intense artist pushback, the New York City Opera (NYCO) is failing to achieve the sustainability it claimed would follow the controversial model that general manager and artistic director George Steel described as “paying people only for the work that they do.” Steel’s full quote, from a 2012 NYCO press statement and subsequently published by WQXR, was the crux …