Arts Advocacy: Page 11

According to the Detroit Free Press, there were negotiations today: The musicians and management of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra returned to the bargaining table this afternoon to try to settle the contentious strike that enters its 17th week on Monday. DSO board members received an e-mail from management today saying that talks had resumed, said […]

The war of words heated up during the time I was writing the previous post: Musicians’ spokesman Greg Bowens disputed the $40.1 million figure, saying, “That must be another example of the fuzzy math that got the orchestra into the deficits it’s in now.”… Bowens declined to address most other issues in management’s Saturday morning […]

Norman thinks that Mahler invented the American symphony orchestra. He makes a good case: Mahler split the Carnegie season into four subscription blocs, each with a thematic base, something no conductor had tried before. As well as a Regular Series, he put in a Beethoven cycle “for the education of lovers of classical music, for […]

Last Saturday I was on my way to New York, which in practice is pretty much an all-day business. So I saw almost nothing about the Tucson shootings until I heard about them during the League seminar I was helping out with on Sunday. What I heard then caught me off-guard; apparently one of the […]

Maybe: The striking musicians and management of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra traded barbs and accusations on today while a settlement to the 15-week-old strike remained elusive — even as management appeared to sweeten its offer for the first time since November. The musicians called a news conference to accuse management of threatening to cancel the […]

There’s something about conducting this kid really gets, although he really should have turned the last page of the score before he thought the piece was over: Wouldn’t it be nice if more kids this age thought Beethoven was this much fun? And why don’t they, anyway? I wonder what would happen if kids treated […]

Joseph Horowitz doubled down on his remarks about musician compensation in a later blog post (analyzed by Drew McManus here): If I sound unsympathetic to the musicians, it’s because I’ve heard one too many times the strident union litany blaming ignorant boards and incompetent managers. Running an orchestra is a thankless task. I’ve done it. […]

Interlochen Public Radio did a piece yesterday on the DSO strike; in particular the service conversion proposals that management has put on the table. The whole thing is worth reading. But I was particularly struck by comments made by Joseph Horowitz: …there are those in the industry who argue this discussion is way overdue. Joe […]

One of the most damaging misconceptions about orchestras is that we raise money because we don’t make enough on ticket sales to cover the total expense of the concerts. The reality is very little of the fixed expenses of orchestras is covered by ticket sales, which typically cover, at most, the marginal expenses of putting […]