Orchestra Life: Page 4

Richard Levine has the distinction (along with the late Henry Shaw) of being the longest-serving editor of Senza Sordino in ICSOM’s history. His thoughts on departing from the post were contained in a long article in the August 2014 edition of the newsletter. Richard has been a friend for a long time, so I will […]

One of the oddities of an orchestral career is the lack of control that we have over what we play. A consequencesof that odd fact is that, towards the end of a career, it’s possible to state with some certainty that one will have played a work for the last time. I’ve been musing on […]

The League of American Orchestras recently opened registration for their 2015 Conference to be held May 27-29, 2015 in Cleveland, Ohio.  They are offering free conference registrations to “musicians from League member orchestras only – cannot have any administrative or conducting responsibilities at your orchestra.” View the full conference schedule here.

On Thursday, January 8, 2015, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced the creation of the National Take a Stand Festival, an initiative to create a unified national platform for El Sistema-inspired programs throughout the US. The initiative will bring world-renowned conductors, guest artists and teachers to students in El Sistema programs around the country. The National […]

The folks at soundnotion.tv hosted a discussion with Drew McManus and myself on the subject of substitute pay and how it was handled in last year’s Minnesota Orchestra settlement. The discussion was moderated (very well, I thought) by David MacDonald and Sam Merciers. It can be watched on YouTube here. I felt the discussion covered […]

There was an unusual amount of feedback on my post last week about the pay disparity between full-time musicians and subs in Minnesota and how that might have come about. Some of the feedback confirmed my suspicions that the root of the problem was a “new model” mindset on the part of some board members. […]

The Future Symphony Institute (FSI) began as an idea eleven years ago, born of my own protracted efforts to demonstrate what seemed to me some rather obvious opportunities for growing our audiences at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) at a time when we still had no red ink, were flying high with Yuri Temirkanov, and […]

Polyphonic has published several “travelogues” by touring orchestra members. Two writers that are particularly eloquent are Charles Rex, violinist with the New York Philharmonic, and Yvonne Caruthers, recently-retired ‘cellist with the National Symphony. Charles wrote about the NY Philharmonic’s tours to Vietnam and North Korea. While he was in North Korea in 2007, he sent […]

One of the things that mystified me about the Dallas situation was the involvement of the NLRB; generally disputes between the union and management over contract administration are handled through the grievance arbitration process. Not this one, apparently: The union intervened after a January incident in which DSO management suspended without pay an associate principal […]

My Editor’s Choice post this time around is a blog/article that was just published a few days ago. It centers around Baumol’s curse. If you aren’t familiar with that term you will be after you read this article by Duncan Webb. And if you’re really into it you can find it discussed in eight different […]