Blog: Page 78

It’s a beer bottle orchestra, and it’s not a bad idea on lots of levels: It humanizes the orchestra, makes the players seem “normal,” gives the orchestra some media exposure and hopefully brings in some money to the coffers. Doesn’t about every mid-size city and larger have a favorite local beer? Note to orchestra marketing […]

About a week ago, my BBB Charles Noble linked to a post by former Seattle Symphony concertmaster Ilkka Talvi on what’s wrong with our business. According to Talvi, the answer is “quite a bit”: Shrink the size of an orchestra to about 60, large enough to play the classics we love, and hire extras when […]

I suppose that most of the readers of the Polyphonic blog are aware that Leonard Slatkin suffered a heart attack 5 or 6 weeks ago.  I don’t usually pay much attention to reports like that, but since I’m just about the same age as Slatkin, I read his account of the incident with great interest.  […]

One of the unintended side-effects of helping to negotiate a new contract for one’s orchestra is the history that one learns along the way. This makes sense if one thinks about it; negotiations (especially regarding non-economic items) are often attempts by one or the other side to remedy problems that were often unforeseen when the […]

Legos.  You know what they are, little pieces of plastic that have an interlocking system that allows the user to combine them in an infinite number of ways.  With Legos you can make things like buildings or vehicles.  If you don’t like what you make, you can continually try to improve it by rearranging the […]

Norman Lebrecht writes a really good column. Why would someone do this? My orchestra gets an endowment gift for a really good purpose. My orchestra also got nominated for a Grammy. Alex Ross thinks Dudamel is the real thing. The next step is records that spin really fast and need to be changed every five […]

Would this be called a gaggle of oboists? Happy birthday. Would have been more impressive without the pay cuts. Some coverage didn’t even bother to mention the musicians’ concessions, although they did, of course, feel the staff’s pain. The Chicago Lyric Opera orchestra has a new contract after threatening to strike. New Mexico Symphony musicians […]

In a blogging career lasting about 5 years now, I’ve learned not to expect much feedback. It’s not because people don’t read blogs about orchestras or the AFM – the two topics I write about – because the traffic stats show otherwise. And it’s not that people don’t care, because otherwise why would they take […]

University Turns iPhones Into Musical Instruments NEW YORK (Reuters) – Welcome to an orchestra of the 21st century. iPhones are being used as musical instruments in a new course at an American university. Students at the University of Michigan are learning to design, build and play instruments on their Apple Inc. smartphones, with a public […]

Most orchestra musicians don’t pay much attention to union politics. That’s OK: most politics in the AFM is not worth paying much attention to. But there was an election the other day that’s worth noting. The two largest locals in the AFM are Local 47 (Los Angeles) and Local 802 (New York). Both are dominated […]