Issue: Chairperson's Reports
I’ve been reviewing some recent headlines from the national press: Colorado Symphony (cue drumroll) is back in the black ...the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra will make its long-awaited debut March 4, marking the return of a professional orchestra to the state more than two years after the Honolulu Symphony played its final note. ...another milestone in Alabama Symphony’s rise. Buffalo … [Read more...]
Issue: Chairperson's Reports
Title: The Perilous Life of Symphony Orchestras: Artistic Triumphs and Economic Challenges Author: Robert J. Flanagan Publisher: Yale University Press Publication Date: January 24, 2012 [December 05, 2011 according to publisher website] ISBN: 9780300171938 Hardcover: 240 pages No one is going to read this book. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. A handful of people will read this book, and … [Read more...]
Issue: Chairperson's Reports
One late night during this summer’s ICSOM Conference in Detroit, delegates gathered informally in the chairman’s suite to watch the documentary Music Makes a City. This beautiful film describes how the Louisville Orchestra was founded 74 years ago by the visionary mayor Charles Farnsley, who realized that the orchestra could lift the city out of the long Great Depression punctuated by devastating … [Read more...]
Issue: Chairperson's Reports
When the complete archive of Senza Sordino was posted on the ICSOM website, I spent hours reading through issue after issue. It is clear just from that source that no person had a greater influence over the gains of orchestral musicians during the past fifty years than Leonard Leibowitz. I found a 1974 entry from my own orchestra, long before I joined, which said, “We feel the sense of … [Read more...]
Issue: Chairperson's Reports
Recently WQXR in New York held a panel discussion called American Orchestras: Endangered Species? And, unfortunately, I’m afraid the title of the session betrayed its bias. The session began with the moderator pronouncing that “orchestras from Honolulu to New Mexico to Syracuse have shut down entirely.” It is this sort of misleading language from within our own field that leads to negative … [Read more...]
Issue: Chairperson's Reports
Recently, Michael Steele was asked to name his favorite book, and he answered War and Peace. He then went on to quote from the book, saying “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” Aside from not knowing the difference between Tolstoy and Dickens, I thought his reference was appropriate, as it is the best of times, and it is the worst of times. The notion that anything about these … [Read more...]
Issue: Chairperson's Reports
One of the most jarring juxtapositions in American film comes from The Deer Hunter, where lifelong friends spend one final night of celebration in a Pennsylvania mining town before they are sent to Vietnam. Arriving drunk and exhausted in their local hang-out, Chopin’s Nocturne No. 6 in G minor is played on an out-of-tune barroom piano, momentarily entrancing the friends just before an immediate … [Read more...]
Issue: Chairperson's Reports
This summer I delivered speeches to the AFM Convention, the ROPA Conference, and the ICSOM Conference. The following are excerpts from each of those speeches. AFM Convention, Las Vegas, June 24 There can be no doubt that these are difficult times, both within our union and for the arts across North America. But we believe that every crisis is an opportunity, and we believe that the ways things … [Read more...]
Issue: Chairperson's Reports
As I write this, I have begun my preparations for the 98th Convention of the American Federation of Musicians, to be held June 21–25 in Las Vegas. I will arrive with the hope that we will create a more unified union, but I will also arrive with trepidation that the atmosphere of internal fighting and negativity will persist. I believe that the way things are is not the way things have to be. … [Read more...]
Issue: Chairperson's Reports
In May 2007 I wrote an article for Senza Sordino about my travels as ICSOM chairman during my first fifteen months in office. At the time I estimated that I had traveled over 40,000 miles to meet with the musicians of ICSOM and the AFM. Now, three years later, it is impossible for me even to attempt to estimate how far I have traveled to visit with musicians in North America and Europe. ICSOM’s … [Read more...]
