Happy New Year, everyone! I’d like to suggest a New Year’s resolution for everyone in the music business who is going to play a recital this year – keep it simple and do name the piano player.
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The Desolation of ……. HeDaCam
It’s that time of year, when good little boys and girls eagerly await the next installment from Middle Earth. I can’t wait for 25 years from now when at Christmas time I will take my grandkids to see Peter Jackson’s 29th installment from Tolkien’s universe – The Children of Hurin: Revenge of Mȋm. If you don’t get the reference don’t worry about it. That story also involves a dragon, and a desolation….
What Biko Taught Me
Well, it’s happened again. There goes another bitter confrontation centered around the Minnesota Orchestra lockout. What I wonder, though, is how people could manage to have so disparate views about what has happened?
Calling Joe Welch
An unfortunate thing happened to me over social media over the last 24 hours. It was, of course, related to the Minnesota Orchestra, and it rather accurately distills the raw and unfettered emotions surrounding this controversy. Somehow this got me thinking about what we, the community, have lost.
The Difference Between Simple and Easy
In the wreckage that is the Minnesota Orchestra a lot of us have been throwing around ideas on what the next move should be. Many of these ideas are intriguing, some are debatable. A large part of these discussion have rotated around very simple ideas which on the surface seem no-brainers. Unfortunately, many of these are a trap.
Setting the Record Straight: A Clarification and an Apology
In my last post I made some very pointed jabs concerning the situation at the Minnesota Orchestra. I have heard through the grapevine that these may have been misinterpreted by some involved in the lockout. I want to clarify my intent and apologize if anyone has been offended.
Well…
18 months ago Sticks&Drones first broke the news about the labor strife at the Minnesota Orchestra in a blog entitled The Sinking of the Minnesota. Reaction to that post was, to put it mildly, somewhat negative. I was excoriated in the press as being “unhelpful,” for “throwing unnecessary fuel on the fire,” and other things, some of which I would have thought unprintable in this day and age. In that post I made the following statements: Many musicians appear convinced that during this round of contract negotiations the M.O. is intent on … Continue Reading
Blah Blah…4000+ empty words and there is a REAL problem with the league conference
Cutting to the chase, the bottom line with the 4000 + words of “thesaurial” prowess from Philip Kennicott, is that we should stop doing what isn’t working now, and go back to what wasn’t working before…Huh?