You might remember from an earlier post that I was in Chicago this month at the League of American Orchestra's National Conference. Going to the conference revealed the current issues, unspoken fears, and magnitude of the challenge being faced within the field. The elephant in the room was the current financial meltdown and its impact on precarious institutions like symphony orchestras. But the implication was that the problem was larger than the bleak economy. The problem is us. Darwin was right: When circumstances change, we have to … [Read more...]

It's a concert week for me. Tomorrow night, the Adrian Symphony Orchestra will present a pops concert to end the season. As of early in the week we had seven seats left to sell and none of them were "two-together" in the hall. Mid-week I stopped by the local radio station to meet with the station manager who was going to do the narration for this concert when he surprised me with, "Hey, today the phones lit up when we gave away two tickets for the concert. We couldn't believe how quickly people were calling in!" Excuse me? We hadn't offered a … [Read more...]

Last week, while participating in the League of American Orchestras' National Conference in Chicago, I attended a Chicago Symphony Orchestra Dvorak Festival concert with Sir Mark Elder conducting and Alisa Weilerstein as the very able soloist. My seat was in the Upper Balcony, and I ascended the stairs to the very top of Symphony Hall. It's quite a view from that perch - the rake of the hall takes your breath away until you get used to the steep angle looking down on the stage. The ceiling seems close enough to touch if you could just jump … [Read more...]

  Click on this for the speech! I found a terrific little speech by Seth Godin on Ted.com, and I think it might be of benefit as we think about drawing communities together around the arts. I've come to respect Godin's thinking on a number of subjects. His book, Purple Cow, formed the basis of the Adrian Symphony Orchestra's reinvention of itself with some quite remarkable results, and it is such a simple concept that it can be applied to a number of seemingly unrelated areas and activities. It has even encouraged me to ask myself, … [Read more...]