Blog: Page 87

I’ve been reading audition ads in the International Musician for a long time now, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that caused me to scratch my head quite as hard as the one placed by the Philadelphia Orchestra in the September 2009 issue of the IM for “Viola Substitute Pool.” I’ve seen ads […]

A view from across the Atlantic: In my article on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last week, I said that in recent years more than a dozen US orchestras had ‘gone to the wall’. I am glad to say this was wrong. 13 orchestras did in fact file for bankruptcy protection between 1986 and 2008, but […]

Among other problems, you could fall into dark holes and break things: A Florida Panhandle conductor is recovering after falling 14 feet into the empty space below a moveable orchestra pit on the opening night of an opera he had written. David Ott fell Friday after the debut of “The Widow’s Lantern,” an original work […]

The two-time grammy winning jazz composer Maria Schneider is a friend, and in conversations we have had she expressed  an interesting take on the stereotypical starving artist.  She theorizes that part of the reason record companies are able to make huge profits while the artists often make so little, is because many musicians have the […]

My Google search for orchestra news has turned up a large number of articles on the retirement of Boston Symphony principal harp Ann Hobson Pilot. It’s a newsworthy event; I believe she was the first African-American principal player in a major American orchestra, and one of the first African-Americans in any American orchestra at all. […]

The current economic model for our industry is built largely on the subscription model best described by the late, great Danny Newman in his book Subscribe Now! So this news was shocking even to your been there, done that blogger: Gustavo Dudamel, the new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, may be the hottest […]

…but for Tchaikowsky, this kid is amazing.

This caught my eye: His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI will release “Alma Mater– Music From The Vatican” featuring Marian hymns, prayers, chants, etc., including “Regina Coeli”, by California (USA) based record label Geffen Records owned by Universal Music Group (UMG), which is a subsidiary of Vivendi. Pope, accompanied by the choir of the Philharmonic Academy […]

American orchestras are not the only ones feeling the need to adapt to the new millenium: Traditional concerts with overtures, concertos and symphonies will continue to exist in years to come, according to the managing director of the German Orchestra Association, Gerald Mertens, but not at the exclusion of everything else. “There will also be […]

There was one of those scary “model your leadership on the collaboration between conductor and orchestra” blog posts in the Baltimore Sun the other day: Musicians took furloughs and pay cuts that came to a 12.5 percent reduction in compensation. Administrative folks took pay cuts of up to 15 percent. But none of this would […]