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Let’s make a commitment to creating and nurturing cooperative ventures, not just within our inner circles, or our comfort zones, but those that stretch us artistically and those that make our entities more efficient.
Face it: we’re very, very conservat…

Sunday morning I got up early to catch a 7:00 AM flight to Washington DC to attend the memorial event for Fred Zenone. As I had ample time between arrival and the beginning of the event, I decided to take the train, which got me to within a 25-minute walk of the church. After changing […]

Did you know that there are acoustic termites? Me neither: The vacant Ford Auditorium, once home to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and a hot spot for pop music concerts, famous speeches and theatrical productions before it closed in 1990, is expected to be demolished as early as May… Built in 1955, the auditorium was revered […]

A Tale of Two Audiences Let’s talk about programming, shall we? Any music director of an American orchestra, when programming a season, is striving to create balance. What does the orchestra need to play in order to grow artistically? What does the audience want to hear? What do they need to hear in order to […]

Sir Isaac Newton, generally regarded as the most influential scientist in human history, once said “if I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Those of us who make a living playing in orchestras stand on the shoulders of giants as well. One of them, Fred Zenone, died on […]

It’s not because they make more money, or have all that power, or gets lots of aerobic exercise from moving their arms so much. Apparently it’s because they get to stand up while working: In academic papers with titles such as, “Your Chair: Comfortable but Deadly,” physicians point to surprising new research showing higher rates […]

Here’s an article that appeared in the Entertainment section of the Los Angeles Times last week. The author says she is cynical and that is apparent, but I’m even more cynical about the article itself.  It’s definitely representative of “old school” thinking.  See if you agree. Culture Monster All the Arts, All the Time The […]

Here’s an interview with Mark Morris, the well-known choreographer, that appeared recently in the Boston Globe. In the first part of the interview he hits the nail on the head in his answer to the question, “Why is live music so important to you in performance?”  Ballet and dance company musicians out there, remember this […]

Some of the choices that the MacArthur Foundation has made in the past when awarding their “genius grants” to people in our field have struck me a little… odd. A few years ago, a MacArthur award went to Marin Alsop, and I remember feeling at the time that it might have had more to with […]

Yesterday the South Dakota Symphony played its Lakota Music Project at Crazy Horse Memorial near Custer, SD in the Black Hills. http://crazyhorsememorial.org/info/‘lakota-music-project’-highlights-native-americans’-day-at-crazy-horse/ It was Native American Day in South Dakota (Governor George Mickelson renamed Columbus Day in the 1990, part of his Common Ground initiative). The Lakota Music Project has been over five years in […]