Articles: Page 16

As professional musicians, we all have had those one or two special teachers that really turned us on to music. If not, we probably wouldn’t be devoting our lives to this. The following by Kansas City Principal Trombonist, Roger Oyster is a tribute to his teacher Milt Stevens. As you read this I’ll wager that with some minor name changing you’ll find similarities with your own experience.

Adam Crane’s, article, “Audition Mastery Guide” offers good tips and practice techniques for audition preparation. He presents his ideas in a methodical and organized manner. New ideas to younger players or good reminders for experienced ones, there should be takeaways here for all readers.

Harmony was a journal published by the Symphony Orchestra Institute (the organization from which the Orchestra Musician Forum and its website Polyphonic.org evolved). It was a journal of thoughtful insight and opinion about the complex dynamics of symphony orchestra organizations, and it presented essays and reports authored by practitioners, scholars, and other close observers of orchestras.
Dr. William Mesa is a professor of management and accounting at Colorado Christian University and an amateur musician who plays in two community orchestras in Denver. His interest in both music and business lead him to a doctoral dissertation that, in part, discussed, organized and categorized the articles found in Harmony. We are the beneficiaries of his work and those doing research in orchestra dynamics, effectiveness and change will find the paper that follows below to be very useful.

And now the conclusion of Henry Fogel’s article, Are Three Legs Appropriate? Or Even Sufficient?, written for the April 2000 issue of Harmony. Don’t miss Mr. Fogel’s interview with Polyphonic.org’s Interview Series Host Greg Sandow!

For eight years, 1995-2003, the Symphony Orchestra Institute (SOI) published Harmony. It was a journal of thoughtful insight and opinion about the complex dynamics of symphony orchestra organizations. The journal presented essays and reports authored by practitioners, scholars, and other close observers of orchestras. In 2004 when the founder of the SOI, Paul Judy, gifted the SOI to the Eastman School of Music, the Orchestra Musician Forum and its website Polyphonic was created. The Harmony archives were included.
The following article, Are Three Legs Appropriate? Or Even Sufficient? was written by Henry Fogel, then President of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association, for the April 2000 issue of Harmony. Mr. Fogel is now President and CEO of the American Symphony Orchestra League. Be sure to watch his interview with Polyphonic.org’s Interview Series Host Greg Sandow!
In our continued efforts to inform the orchestral community, we will feature Harmony articles, from time to time, for those of you who would like to reread them, or for others who may have never had the opportunity to do so before. Those of you who may want original copies of this publication can obtain them free of charge (while supplies last) by emailing info@polyphonic.org. Enjoy…..

“The latest Sphinx Organization newsletter contained a link to a video of Aaron Dworkin, President and Founder, delivering a speech at the Chautauqua Foundation this past August. I watched the speech and was so moved by Aaron’s personal story and by his poems that I asked him to let us publish a shortened version of the speech here at Polyphonic.
To watch the entire speech, go to the FORA.TV website.”

In September 2007, the Virtual Discussion Panel featured librarians from four orchestras in the US and Canada. One of the topics covered in those discussions was what sort of training is needed to become an orchestra librarian. Karen Schnackenburg, head librarian of the Dallas Symphony, and a past president of MOLA (Major Orchestra Librarians Association), expands on that topic in the following article.

Janet Horvath, Minnesota Orchestra cellist, offers some sensible guidelines for how to achieve new goals with our instruments without hurting our bodies doing so.

Janet Horvath, Minnesota Orchestra cellist, offers some simple techniques — her “Onstage Tricks” — for keeping you limber while performing. It’s all too frequent that nerves or an upcoming solo or a repetitive passage can cause us to tense up, often without realizing it. Here are several easy methods for relieving that stress.

As the controversy rages in the US regarding the Patriot Act and the extent to which the government can intervene in ordinary citizen’s lives in the name of “homeland security,” it is interesting to look back at the role symphony musicians played in safeguarding (or not) civil liberties in the midst of the McCarthy era HUAC (House UnAmerican Activities Committee)hearings.
Julie Ayer, violinist with the Minnesota Orchestra, has excerpted another chapter from her book, More Than Meets the Ear: How Symphony Musicians Made Labor History that details the birth of ICSOM and the role that symphony musicians, ICSOM and the AFM played during the Communist witchhunt of the 1950s.
Once again, I highly recommend Julie’s book in its entirety. Reading it will make you proud of the impact musicians have had on the labor movement and in improving conditions in their own working lives.