Careers: Page 17

Tom Service, who blogs for the Guardian (UK), reports on a really good idea from the Royal Philharmonic Society and the Association for British Orchestras: The annual Salomon prize is for orchestral players – or, rather, for a single orchestral player in a UK-based professional ensemble who in the eyes and ears of their fellow […]

There’s been a certain amount of piling-on in response to comments that conductor James Gaffigan made on his blog a few weeks ago (h/t to Adaptistration and oboeinsight). After providing us with some details of his recent guest conducting, and news of his new apartment in Lucerne, he proceeds to some rather unfortunate remarks inspired […]

… although one might need a slightly twisted view of things to find it so. An article in the September 2010 edition of Medical Problems of Performing Musicians shows us how: …in 1935, trumpeter Louis Armstrong hurt his lips from too much playing and had to lay down his horn for a year. His condition […]

This story didn’t show up on the usual arts blogging sites, but it might well have been the most important news for our field in a while: In what labor officials and lawyers view as a ground-breaking case involving workers and social media, the National Labor Relations Board has accused a company of illegally firing […]

One of the scariest rituals of orchestra life is the arrival of a new Chief Executive Officer. A new Music Director can be very unsettling for the members of the orchesra, of course – it’s the Music Director who has the power of economic life and death over individual musicians, and obviously no other person […]

Peter Dobrin, in an article for the Philadelphia Inquirer on the possible departure of Philly clarinetist Ricardo Morales for the New York Phil, is skeptical: Lurking in the background is the hypocrisy that has long run through orchestral personnel decisions. Both players and management have held that talent is the sole criterion for determining who […]

Over the course of more years than I care to remember I’ve heard lots and lots of auditions. But it was brought home to me again the other day, at another audition, that I’ve only ever heard one audition that resulted in a section musician winning a permanent titled position in their own orchestra. It […]