Blog: Page 31

It’s tax time, so for the next few weeks the Editor’s Choice will feature tax related questions. 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 […]

Events in the Twin Cities this season have both horrified and fascinated those who care about orchestras and orchestra musicians. Events of such magnitude usually have a backstory, and the months-long lockout of the musicians of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra has a very rich backstory indeed. In 2002 and 2003, the board, staff and […]

Concert programmers, teaching artists , armies of program annotators, and museums with their rental headsets believe that audiences today lack experience and confidence in approaching an art work.

Perhaps my most intense pet peeve about playing in an orchestra has to do with fingerings. When one has to share a part with someone else, one expects a bit of respect. But, unfortunately, that often doesn’t happen — I have known stand partners to write fingerings over almost every note in the part. To […]

This article by Michael Drapkin was first published in October of 2011. In it, Michael describes a different orchestra financial model–how the financial stakeholders of an orchestra i.e., the musicians, staff, conductors could share in the economic success or failure of their orchestra. There is definite risk/reward here, if instituted by an orchestra it would […]

My top priority — of course — is to protect the young people who study here, our faculty and staff, and all the many thousands of concert visitors we have every year. But this mandate necessitates negotiating a way through a challenging Scylla and Charybdis of choices.

Many orchestras are designing outreach programs, in order for their musicians to become more involved with their community. One of the more successful community engagement programs is that of the National Arts Centre Orchestra (NAC Orchestra) in Ottawa. In 2006 Polyphonic published two articles about NAC Orchestra’s outreach to Canada’s aboriginal population. NAC tours nationally […]

Why do we love terrifying ourselves? I am sure we’ve all experienced those spine-tingling moments as a child telling the most frightening stories late at night when parents are asleep.

The Berliners’ model should lead us all to imagine more flexible and responsible organizations that have music as their mission, and the community as their foundation.

Peter Pastreich held the position of Executive Director of the San Francisco Symphony for 21 years, retiring in 1999. By all accounts that I’ve seen or heard, he is one of the most respected orchestra managers—maybe it’s because he’s retired now. Anyway–the article that follows is an account of his 2009 presentation at the League […]