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“The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men,” Charles de Gaulle once famously remarked. A rather public discussion of whether music directors can be indispensable is happening over the physical health of James Levine and its impact on the institutional health of the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony. At some point the […]

Most orchestra musicians, in addition to loving the repertoire they play (or most of it, at least), like other music as well – although just what they like varies greatly from person to person. My secret vice is Scottish folk music. So I was saddened to hear that the great Scottish tenor Kenneth McKellar died […]

I don’t know if the New York Times has done this kind of profile on an orchestra musician yet; we may need to be content to see one on an orchestra manager. At least they picked a good one to profile: In early 1990, I got a call from the New York Philharmonic, which was […]

The Atlanta Symphony board has decided to hire someone without all that old-fashioned orchestra management baggage: The heavy odds were for an insider — a career symphonic administrator who’d already led one of the nation’s top orchestras and was looking for a lateral move. Instead, the board of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is naming Stanley […]

Musicians don’t talk much about focal dystonia; perhaps it’s a superstitious avoidance akin to trying to ward off the Evil Eye. For dystonia really is a horror show; arguably the leading career-killing disorder of all.

It’s often forgotten that the core concept behind the World Wide Web (as opposed to the Internet, with which the Web is often confused) is the hyperlink. A hyperlink is that underlined word or phrase or image on a Web page on which one clicks to go there and find out more. The power of […]

I read with interest the thread that went through Orchestra-l recently about many symphony musicians who feel that orchestras just dress too formally to relate to their public. Well, I have the absolute opposite opinion — many of us dress way too informally. Yes, white-tie and tails are an anachronism from another century and perhaps […]

The board of the Charleston (SC) Symphony has decided to call it quits for this season: A significant drop in fundraising dollars, exacerbated by the recession’s “strong headwind” has forced the Charleston Symphony Orchestra to suspend its operations, effective immediately, board president Ted Legasey said Sunday. It is the first time in the orchestra’s 75-year […]

So the Vienna Philharmonic finally recognized that women really can play the violin (or whatever instrument) and appointed a woman as Concertmaster. In honor of this occasion, which shouldn’t really have to be an occasion (if the Vienna Philharmonic lived in the same decade, or even century, as the rest of us), I asked a […]

Coverage of the impact of concessions on musicians is not usually as explicit as in this article by Tim Smith for the Baltimore Sun: Musicians of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra have agreed to take yet another salary hit in an effort to help the organization weather the continued effects of the recession. The players accepted […]