Articles: Page 13

If you have read the “about us” area of this website, you know that our roots are with an organization that was founded by Paul R. Judy in 1994—the Symphony Orchestra Institute. As a successful businessman with a keen interest in music and symphony orchestras, Mr. Judy created the SOI with the particularly interest and dedication to improve the effectiveness of symphony orchestra organizations. His interest in organizational change led him to commission Laura Roelofs to write a series of eight articles for the web version of the SOI journal Harmony. The articles describe various approaches to understanding and implementing organization change.
Today Polyphonic begins presenting this series again, and will publish one article every two weeks. But to start us off, and since seven years have elapsed since Laura published the first article on the subject, we asked her to bring us up to date with recent trends in the field.

By ROBIN POGREBIN New York Times January 25, 2009 Read this article from the New York Times  

Polyphonic’s tribute to Ron Bauers

The newspapers are full of stories about how arts organizations are suffering from the recession in terms of contributed income and ticket sales, not to mention the loss in endowment funds because of the stock market’s steep decline. Christoper Stager offers some very concrete and innovative strategies orchestras can use to restructure their subscription marketing campaigns during this recessionary economy. Perpetual Acquisition marketing? Selling subscriptions on a rolling 12-month basis? Read on for some fascinating and unusual insights.

This is Polyphonic.org’s tribute to those of our colleagues and co-workers who left us in 2008. By its nature it is almost certainly not a complete list. We apologize for any omissions, and will make corrections if you post them in the “Comments” area.

Laura Ross, ICSOM Secretary and a violinist with the Nashville Symphony, attended the MOLA conference held in Nashville in May, 2008, and was asked to address the MOLA business meeting. She offers a passionate rationale for including librarians in an orchestra’s CBA (collective bargaining agreement). Paul Gunther, principal librarian of the Minnesota Orchestra, adds his thoughts about music librarians to Laura’s comments.

Since I do lot of teaching I read a lot of books. Not all of them are music-related, but a high proportion of them are. From time to time in this space I’ll be posting reviews of books I’ve read, with the hope that 1) you’ll be able to sort through books more quickly (as to whether you really want to spend the time reading them) and 2) you’ll read something that you might not have otherwise considered. Enjoy!

Since I do lot of teaching I read a lot of books. Not all of them are music-related, but a high proportion of them are. From time to time in this space I’ll be posting reviews of books I’ve read, with the hope that 1) you’ll be able to sort through books more quickly (as to whether you really want to spend the time reading them) and 2) you’ll read something that you might not have otherwise considered. Enjoy!

Since I do lot of teaching I read a lot of books. Not all of them are music-related, but a high proportion of them are. From time to time in this space I’ll be posting reviews of books I’ve read, with the hope that 1) you’ll be able to sort through books more quickly (as to whether you really want to spend the time reading them) and 2) you’ll read something that you might not have otherwise considered. Enjoy!

I’m sure many of you have seen the segments on CBS’ 60 Minutes recently about El Sistema, Gustavo Dudamel, and José Antonio Abreu, the Founder of El Sistema. Symphony magazine did a cover story on El Sistema in their March/April 2008 issue. And the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra gave an astounding performance at Carnegie Hall in November.
Señor Abreu spoke at the National Performing Arts Conference in Denver on June 13, 2008 for all the delegates. The League of American Orchestras has some great photos and an introductory video about El Sistema that was shown at this plenary session on their website.
Later that afternoon, he addressed a session as part of the League of American Orchestra’s conference. Jesse Rosen, the League’s CEO, asked Señor Abreu to tell the attendees a bit about Venezuela, so that everyone could gain a greater insight into El Sistema.
His remarks were translated by Bolivio Bottome, but she seemed to be paraphrasing what he said because he was so intent on telling us so much! I was pretty much able to keep up with her translation, but what follows is definitely not a literal translation of Señor Abreu’s remarks but rather my attempt at capturing the gist of what he presented.