Blog: Page 21

Polyphonic has Been Absolutely Inundated (OK; a few requests on Facebook, but this is a business where self-promotion seems to require the kind of spin that would make tennis balls spiral off into the next county) with requests for examples of what I was referring to in my previous post. So here goes. One of […]

…for lousy Christmas carol arrangements. What is it about Christmas music that leads arrangers into the ugly back alleys of kitsch? Is it simply that it takes a genius to make a good arrangement of a good tune? Copland’s handling of the great Shaker hymn tune in his Appalachian Spring would suggest that. (Speaking of […]

In 2007 we posted an article entitled, Alias: A New Kind of Ensemble.  Looking back with 20/20 hindsight it can easily seen that Alias was, and still is, part of a trend—a movement among musicians to form “alternative ensembles.” In an effort to understand more about this trend, the Eastman School of Music recently inaugurated […]

Peter Renshaw calls for a new paradigm to address the key issues confronting learning and development in the arts.

The Baltimore Ravens have announced that not only will the Baltimore Symphony and their OrchKids Bucket Band perform at the Ravens’ Thanksgiving-night half-time show at their game with the Pittsburgh Steelers, they have pledged to give $15,000 to the OrchKids program. Seeing such support from a football team for a symphony orchestra gives me hope. […]

Some historical events are burned into the memories of everyone who lived through them. For my generation, the first such event – and, for me, still the most shocking – was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 50 years ago today. I was in 8th grade, about six weeks short of my 12th birthday, […]

It has been said that though the "educational" kids’ concert is merely a symptom of the general malaise in programming and concert presentation in the main orchestral season. It seems to be down to asking what audience and audience development do we want?

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, the phrase “new business model” is far too often used as shorthand for “paying musicians less” – ironic given that paying people less is a very old business model indeed. It’s probably a phrase that should be abandoned simply because it’s been so contaminated. Yet there are […]

One of the more intriguing aspects to the psychology of our industry is a general propensity to conspiratorial thinking. It’s not hard to find amongst musicians; the widespread belief that the League of American Orchestras A National Service Organization is behind all our woes is the best-known example, but conspiracy theories fester within orchestras as […]

In 1989, during his tenure as music director of the Louisville Orchestra, Lawrence Leighton Smith wrote an essay stating his personal view concerning the link between the number of players and quality of sound in orchestras. Smith’s “Serenade for Sixty Strings,” published in the March/April 1989 issue of Symphony, the magazine of the American Symphony […]