It’s not often you hear of someone who shoulders the blame for an organization’s deficit by claiming it’s partly their management style that caused it! It makes me wonder though, if nearly half your staff left in the last 14 months, if advertising that is a way to attract solid personnel? Also is a renovated hall the key to help people accept innovative programming?…..
ONE MORE TIME!!!
I’m about to enter my own personal hell and it has led to some reflection on repertoire and the rep choices that orchestras make.
Paying for Arts in the Land of the Free…
I was sad to read that the Milwaukee Symphony are canceling 4 out of their 5 free concerts. It’s probable that many more orchestras might be forced to cancel free concerts as budget choices are made. In Springfield we usually do 2 free concerts each summer. They are not for certain since they’re connected with city festivals that are at this point are on hold. The NEA might be getting $50 million extra this year, so I’ve got a suggestion…..
Dear President Obama…..
Congratulations….to us! So many have tried to define you, to put you in a box so that they may find it easy to corner you, and yet you surprise all of us at every turn….
Dear Mr. President…
Dear Mr. President…….. First, let me tell you how delighted I am to be able to say those words.
Soul Food for Thought
We’re coming up on MLK Jr. day so it is time to reflect on what I’ve been doing the past couple of months.
Challenge = Opportunity – Undoing the Mess(iaen)
So you’re in a fine restaurant, order a dish, eat a little and decide not to finish or to send it back. Maybe you didn’t like it and wished you had asked more about it before ordering, maybe it was under cooked, or that you liked it but you were full. Question, if you were the chef would you march out to the table to make the customer eat it? Well that’s what Itzhak Perlman did recently in a recital after performing a Messiaen piece. Just like in a restaurant though, he could have instead offered the equivalent of a description of the dish or even better, a take out box…….
The Middle (Golden) Age…..
Some seriously good naval gazing into the future of Classical music is going on over on Greg Sandow’s blog. Really detailed posts (there will be 5 in the series) covering a lot of ground and summarizing in his view where things appear to be headed and what to do about it. I do think though that the issue of the average age of the audience is not as alarming as it appears, and quite possibly is something to celebrate…..