Blog: Page 30

There have been been several developments in the Twin Labor Disputes in the State Least Likely To Experience Labor Disputes (Or At Least Not-Nice Ones). None of them offer much visible hope for quick resolution of either situation. On the Minnesota Orchestra front, Graydon Royce of the Minneapolis StarTribune, who has done as good a […]

The more-or-less annual tribute from Polyphonic.org to our colleagues who left us in 2012 is finally online; my apologies to those who were waiting for it and no doubt lost patience many weeks ago. I knew a distressing number of those on this list. Some I knew just in passing (Mark Flint, Geoffrey Fushi, Bob […]

It’s a measure of just how bizarre is the state of labor relations in the orchestra field that only now, months into the most brutal negotiating season in memory, are we seeing the the first “normal” labor dispute – by which I mean a strike (and not a lock-out), not immediately settled (and thus more […]

Thomas Akins, Principal Timpanist with the Indianapolis Symphony from 1965 to 1991, has published his memoirs, Behind the Copper Fence: A Lifetime on Timpani. His book is filled with reminisces about his many years with the Indianapolis Symphony, his training as a timpanist, including seven summers (1960-66) in the League’s Institute for Orchestral Studies with […]

It’s tax time, so here’s our second Editor’s Choice in this series of tax related articles. William Hunt is our resident Polyphonic.org  tax expert. Not only is he a superb violinist, he also has an MBA in finance from the Simon School at the University of Rochester. I don’t know of anyone more knowledgeable than Bill […]

Go out to hear an orchestra concert tonight and chances are the orchestra will be playing Beethoven.  The most recent Orchestra Repertoire Report, from ’09 – ’10, details that 137 orchestras in America performed Beethoven’s music 457 times that season.  His ninth, seventh, and fifth symphonies were ranked first, second and third respectively among the […]

Some rather alarming headlines have appeared in the past few days in the Nashville Press, the best of which was WDEF’s Nashville Symphony Mired in Debt: The Nashville Symphony is in danger of defaulting on $102 million in bonds that were used to build the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. Symphony CEO and President Alan Valentine told […]

As I’m sure most of you know, violist Kim Kashkashian won the Grammy for “Best Classical Instrumental Solo” for her album Kurtag and Ligeti of works by Hungarian composers Gyorgy Kurtag and Gyorgy Ligeti. When the announcement was made, a huge buzz went through the viola world — both because a violist had won the solo […]

We are all prone to plateau in our endeavors, because we don’t have such constant critical prodding and feedback. So our tennis, golf, snooker, running, weightlifting attain a certain level, but then get stuck.

Local 802 has again published a fascinating interview of one of its older members by a younger colleague in their monthly magazine, Allegro. Kuan Cheng Lu, who joined the orchestra in 2004, interviewed Newton Mansfield, who joined the orchestra in 1961.