Articles: Page 25

Have you ever stood in front of a room full of very young children, wondering how on earth to engage them with your instrument? Well, help is here!!
Paul Silver, violist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, works with pre-school children at the Cyert Center for Early Education in Pittsburgh. Paul offers tips and suggestions for how to prepare a session for very young children. He lists some of the tunes he has found to be effective, describes some of the interactive techniques he uses (such as call-and-response), and even includes examples of some of his interactive tools (thanks to Ron Krentzman, Harford Symphony’s librarian, for setting these examples). After reading Paul’s article, you’ll feel much better prepared, and hopefully more comfortable, when performing for young kids.

“Unless musicians sit on the board, they’ll never have any influence in their organization.” A fashionable phrase among a noticeable segment of orchestra musicians today, but what impact will musicians on the board of directors or board committees accomplish. How much influence can one or two musicians have when most boards are comprised of anywhere from 20 to 200 members?
Then there are the issues surrounding representation, are musician board members representing their fellow musicians or are they there to express their own opinions. Even if the musicians have a clearly defined understanding of their presence on a board are the non-musician board members aware of those parameters or even agree with them?
Whether or not musicians should participate on their orchestra’s board is, at best, a sticky issue. Although there’s no universal answer one thing is certain: learning from other musicians who have a long sense of history in the business can shed a great deal of insight onto an otherwise murky subject. Milwaukee Symphony Bassist Roger Ruggeri fits that description perfectly and draws on his more than 45 years of experience (the last 12 of which have been spent as a musician representative to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra board) to illuminate this discussion.

“You know, you’re a first class jerk. A real idiot.” A phrase heard by just about every musician who has sat in a principal chair, served on a committee, or performed the duties of a local union officer. Often, those comments are laced with colorful metaphors designed to drive home the impact of the message.
Nevertheless, Utah Symphony principal flute and President of Local 104 AFM, Erich Graf, appears to have developed a system for how best to deal with these events when he writes, “..the most significant caveat for ongoing survival and success is to learn not to take people and their actions personally. In this workplace, diplomacy is the recipe for success.” As we all know, you don’t learn how to be diplomatic at conservatory so how, exactly, did Erich arrive at this seemingly Zen-like philosophy?
Give his article a read and you’ll begin to understand that if a player gets to the point where they realize there’s more to being an orchestra musician than just playing, how they cross that threshold can make the difference between satisfaction and disillusionment. Erich’s contribution is an enjoyable read and one which I know will leave you full of introspection about where you are in your career, how you got there, and where you plan to go.

Yvonne Caruthers, cellist with the National Symphony, interviewed her colleague Holly Hamilton about using music to work with special-needs children. Holly’s son began working with the Tomatis system, which greatly helped his speech – the experience got her involved in working with these children.
She offers some invaluable advice about what to expect when playing for special-needs kids, what kind of music she plays for them, and how to deal with situations that might make you uncomfortable. She includes several heart-warming stories of the children’s reactions to her playing.

More and more orchestras are employing musicians as educators in addition to their traditional role as performers. Educational services range from small ensembles playing in the classroom to entire orchestras taking up residence in a community for several weeks. And musicians have just as many reactions to being asked to serve as educators through the orchestra as there are different educational services being offered by the orchestra.
In this thoughtful article, Yvonne Caruthers, cellist with the National Symphony, explores the history of orchestra-musicians-as-educators and discusses the role of musicians in their community. She offers many insights into the residency programs the National Symphony have been doing since 1992, and describes how she and her colleagues learned to find their own niche (with lots of surprises along the way) in the wide variety of services offered during a typical residency, matching their own strengths with the opportunities available.

In his second article, Bill Hunt, addresses one of the most commonly-asked tax question for musicians: “How do I depreciate my instrument?” Bill explains the Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System, which is divided into two basic systems: the General Depreciation System (GDS) and the Alternative Depreciation System (ADS). Read on for a concise explanation of a most timely topic.
Send us your performing artist-related tax question, so Bill can address it in a future column.

Bill Cahn has had an illustrative career as a percussionist, performing with the NEXUS percussion group and the Rochester Philharmonic for many years. Recently he’s written a book, Creative Music Making, on the subject of freeform improvisation, and he shares some of his thoughts in this fascinating article.
The Toronto Symphony’s Adopt-A-Player program has a 4th or 5th grade class “adopt” several TSO musicians, with the goal of creating a new piece of music in five weeks. Bill explains how the program works and features material from a Handbook written by TSO clarinetist/composer Raymond Luedeke. Musicians, symphony staff, and volunteers all work with the students to create a musical/theatrical piece.
Bill then describes how he used improvisational techniques with Toronto Symphony musicians, staff, and volunteers during an Adopt-A-Player orientation session, to prepare them for working with the kids. For some of the players, it was the first time they’d ever created a freeform piece!

When I was a player in the Oklahoma Symphony during the 1980s, my colleagues and I were often asked the question “What do you do for a living?” This was a particularly astonishing question, because it usually came from our own Board members, who were very well meaning but misunderstood the life of the professional […]

Bruce Ridge, bassist with the North Carolina Symphony and President of ICSOM, served as the Chair of his orchestra’s Search committee when they were looking for a new Music Director. Bruce has agreed to share his expertise in this area, and to solicit articles from other orchestras with innovative Music Director Search stories to tell.
In this introductory article, Bruce explains the elements he believes are essential to a successful Music Director search, and describes the additional topics he plans to cover in his column.

To complement her article about orchestra residencies and education programs, Yvonne Caruthers, NSO cellist, asked her Music Director, Leonard Slatkin, to share his thoughts about orchestras and their role in music education. “Where Did the Music Go?” is a personal essay about the role orchestral music can play in a child’s inner development, opening doors to what is to come and letting the imagination flourish!