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Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours from everyone at Polyphonic.org!  To celebrate the holiday, we asked each of our editors to design a musical “feast” – a menu of some favorite musical selections for which they are thankful.  Enjoy! Ann Drinan – Senior Editor Appetizer: Hot brie cheese and spicy goat cheese with fancy crackers, […]

You can read the winter issue of Symphony Magazine here.  The issue contains a number of interesting articles including the following: Hyperlinked: Emerging classical artists embrace social media Music Alive: New models for embedding contemporary composers with orchestras – and communities How Can Orchestras Become More Diverse? Five African-America orchestra professionals in a roundtable discussion […]

22 Orchestras Receive Getty Education and Community Investment Grants from the League of American Orchestras Intended to help stimulate growth and excellence in education and community engagement programming, the grants will fund orchestras’ long-term in-school and after-school music programs with social development components, as well as orchestras’ health and wellness programs for populations including hospital […]

It’s not often a story this inspiring comes out of our business: Many people speak about the healing power of music, and I was lucky enough to be able to experience the truth of the idea. In the summer of 2013, I traveled with my now-wife then co-dreamer Lauren to the Middle East to bring […]

John Williams is one of the most important and influential composers writing new music for orchestras today. In fact, the most exciting and anticipated new music for orchestra this year is John Williams’ new score to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Yet, despite his incontestably successful forty-year career writing new music for orchestra and his […]

The New Yorker continues to be the best magazine in the English-speaking work for coverage of arts issues (as opposed to arts news), as demonstrated by an article-length review of Sara Solovitch’s book Playing Scared: A History and Memoir of Stage Fright: Stagefright has been aptly described as “self-poisoning by adrenaline.” In response to stress, […]

Nathan Kahn  of the AFM’s Symphony Services Division has been telling me about the wonderful music wellness program designed by Grand Rapids violinist Diane McElfish Helle, and I plan to find out more and write an article about their work. Today I noticed that Paul Austin, former ROPA Vice President and Grand Rapids hornist, had […]

Copland’s Lincoln Portrait is not terribly popular with orchestra musicians, mostly (I suspect) as a result of over-exposure to bad performances. It invariably gets scheduled on pops programs and outdoor concerts, usually with the lowest-ranking staff conductor who’s in town at the time, and generally with narrators chosen more for who they are rather than […]

The Hartford Symphony has been in the news recently, and not in the way that orchestras want to be: Behind the two-year dispute between the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and the musicians union over a new labor agreement is the symphony’s effort to remake itself to appeal to changing audiences and tastes. The orchestra says it’s […]

My orchestra had auditions for assistant conductor today. We saw six candidates for about 30 minutes each. It was an interesting experience, although not very enjoyable. A few I liked; a few I didn’t. But what struck me most was what always strikes me when dealing with young conductors; their failure to follow my two […]