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My husband loves to listen to TED talks while he’s puttering in the kitchen, and he recently sent me a link to Ben Zander’s TED talk from 2008, about the transformative power of classical music. (Ben Zander has been the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic since 1979, and is a noted public speaker on leadership […]

Eight services into a nine-service week, and it was still only Saturday. Tempers were frayed further by it being the second of two consecutive days in the orchestra’s least favorite venue, an aging vaudeville palace with no backstage facilities except for a cramped below-stage crossover reached by steep but badly-lit staircases apparently designed more for […]

Check out this exciting new opportunity announced recently by the League of American Orchestras: The League of American Orchestras has launched The Ford Musician Awards for Excellence in Community Service, a new program supporting orchestra musicians and the essential work they do in their communities. The program is made possible by Ford Motor Company Fund. […]

It’s no accident that the most influential book in our field may have been Danny Newman’s Subscribe Now!.  Selling tickets by subscription has long been the foundation of orchestras’ earned revenue stream. And most orchestra musicians who’ve had to pay attention to their orchestra’s finances have heard some variant on how the subscription model is fading […]

Things have gotten dire indeed in Hartford. Management issued a statement recently that unless a settlement is reached within the next few weeks, they will close down the orchestra at the end of January. In an unprecedented move, management added a service to the musicians’ schedule, requiring all contracted players (and paying them) to attend […]

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours from everyone at Polyphonic.org!  To celebrate the holiday, we asked each of our editors to design a musical “feast” – a menu of some favorite musical selections for which they are thankful.  Enjoy! Ann Drinan – Senior Editor Appetizer: Hot brie cheese and spicy goat cheese with fancy crackers, […]

Recently Nathan Kahn, SSD negotiator, posted an article on ICSOM’s Orchestra-l list-serve that was published in The Guardian in February 2006 about why so many musicians are quitting their orchestra jobs for… According to Anna Price, the author, The money’s terrible, the stress is awful and the music is plain boring. No wonder so many […]

You can read the winter issue of Symphony Magazine here.  The issue contains a number of interesting articles including the following: Hyperlinked: Emerging classical artists embrace social media Music Alive: New models for embedding contemporary composers with orchestras – and communities How Can Orchestras Become More Diverse? Five African-America orchestra professionals in a roundtable discussion […]

It was dreadful. Just awful. But we had to walk that way to get to the best shops. Massimo Dutti, Boss, Armani and there was a deli nearby too which had sensational Jamon Iberico. So it was just too much bother to reroute and take the long way round. This meant running the gauntlet. The […]

The League of American Orchestras recently announced their new five-year strategic plan. You can read an executive summary, an abridged version, or the entire plan by clicking here. The summary begins with a quote from Jesse Rosen, President & CEO: This plan was developed in a moment of great possibility. It builds on the momentum […]