Drew McManus on the Orchestra business | est. 2003

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra

Keeping Up With The Jones’ In New Jersey Part 2

Fri, Jan 1, 2005
Adaptistration People 098
To continue where Part 1 left off, this article will examine more of the NJSO Internal Review Report to help determine why the NJSO decided to buy the Axelrod string instrument collection. A Review The Short Version The Trustees responsible for the report, Bill Baroni, Alan Danzis, John Forrest, labored to produce a document that

Keeping Up With The Jones’ In New Jersey Part 1

Thu, Jan 1, 2005
Adaptistration People 098
Since publishing the last article about the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra instrument purchase a number of readers sent in some additional points of view, once came from a professional orchestra violinist (not in New Jersey).  They said that historically, the media may be a contributing reason for the decision to buy the instruments, “There is

Axelrod Collection Value Determined By Attitude

Fri, Dec 12, 2004
Adaptistration People 125
The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra released a 66 page report from their Trustee Review Panel regarding the collection of string instruments purchased from Herbert Axelrod. The report will be examined in detail next week, in the meantime, here’s the initial paragraph from the report’s conclusion: “As emphasized earlier, the true value of the instruments for

What Do You Do With $32 Million You Can’t Deduct?

Mon, Dec 12, 2004
  The latest chapter in the “Made for T.V.” saga that is the Herbert Axelrod scandal was his pleading guilty last week to helping a former employee file a fraudulent federal tax return. As part of that guilty plea Axelrod must file a 2003 tax form but is not allowed to claim a $32 million

Violin Turf Wars

Fri, Aug 8, 2004
Earlier in the week, I wrote about how the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra may very well have to submit their “Golden Age” collection purchased from Herbert Axelrod to a new appraisal and authentication process. In that article I briefly touched on the how the business of authenticating and appraising rare string instruments (violins, viola, and