Posted on January 28, 2010 at 6:24 am by Ramon Ricker
in General |

A good example of marketing.

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Posted on January 28, 2010 at 1:35 am by Robert Levine
in General |

Seattle Symphony management and musicians have reached a tentative agreement:

The 23-month, three-season contract — which could be extended for an additional eight months — would immediately cut musicians’ pay by 5 percent until the end of this season, with the current pay scale resuming in 2011. Musicians also would pay a greater share of their health coverage. (more…)

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Posted on January 27, 2010 at 1:55 pm by Robert Levine
in General |

UnionPrivilege, which is a benefits program run by the AFL-CIO for members of its member unions, is matching contributions made by union members for earthquake relief. Details are here.

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Posted on January 27, 2010 at 2:10 am by Robert Levine
in General |

Apparently the New Hampshire Music Festival is doing a pretty thorough 180-degree turn:

Less than two weeks after abandoning pursuit of a new artistic vision and restructured orchestra, which sparked bitter controversy last summer, the Board of the NH Music Festival shuffled directors and management when it met last week. (more…)

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Posted on January 25, 2010 at 6:31 pm by Laura Brownell
in General |

It was a tiny perfect strike. (Torontonians and expat Gary Hanson will get the reference. The rest of you can Google David Crombie.) (more…)

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Posted on January 25, 2010 at 6:18 am by Ramon Ricker
in General |

There’s a music blog on ArtJournal.com called Creative Destruction, but no author is indicated.  Instead this descriptor appears under the link, “Fresh ideas on building arts communities.”  I was curious so I checked it out and found that the blogger is John Thomas Dodson.  He’s a conductor.  You can find out more about him here.

His blog, “Can We Talk” from December 29, 2009 drew me in.  In it he writes of an inspiring Cleveland Orchestra concert of this season, with soloist Richard Goode performing Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto on a program that included Carl Maria von Weber’s Overture to Der Freischütz and Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony. (more…)

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Posted on January 24, 2010 at 11:09 pm by Robert Levine
in General |

A left-leaning political blogger in Philadelphia, age 37, is not happy with his concert-going experience:

I go to about half a dozen concerts per year, and the problems the orchestra faces are pretty obvious to me. Their marketing is horrible, their ushers and ticket sellers treat people like crap (not all, of course, but many), especially people who are there with discount tickets (I’m a subscriber, but since I usually have a self printed ticket they think it’s a discounted ticket), and the facility is completely unwelcoming to people. (more…)

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Posted on January 24, 2010 at 4:43 pm by Robert Levine
in General |

Most readers of this blog will know of Greg Sandow, if only for the work that he’s done for Polyphonic. But he’s done a great deal of other stuff, including writing a blog for ArtsJournal.com. He recently did a post on something that Ray Ricker had written for this blog, and it’s worth reading in full, including the comments.

Greg has been advocating a very different approach for our institutions for a while now. I’m not inclined to agree with his basic thrust, which can be gleaned from the online syllabus for a course he’s teaching at Juilliard called Classical Music in a Age of Pop.

But I must admit that my disagreement isn’t based on any particular insights into audiences past and present, nor do I have a considered view of what our field should do to fix its problems in reaching a wider audience, or even in keeping the audience we have. (more…)

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Posted on January 24, 2010 at 8:57 am by Robert Levine
in General |

Musicians are the only people who use “and” as a noun:

Do you want us to do a crescendo on the and of three?

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Posted on January 23, 2010 at 11:20 am by Robert Levine
in General |

From our colleagues in Minnesota:

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