Here I want to offer a radical idea: That all of us in classical music should get out of the classical music business. As I stressed at the end of my last post, this doesn't mean we should stop doing classical music. It means we should think about it differently. Here's an example. Someone I know, a veteran arts professional with a sterling resume (among other things, he ran one of the leading performing arts institutions in the US), emailed me about something he found dismaying at the New York Philharmonic. Alan Gilbert was about to conduct … [Read more...]

I'll be in Austin on Thursday (that's November 8), to speak to classes at the University of Texas. Don't think I'll have any public availability, which is a shame. I'd love to meet any readers who might be in the area. My host in Austin will be Robert Freeman, former director of the Eastman School, and founder of the entrepreneurship program there, which (as far as I know) is the oldest found in any music school in the US. It'll be a pleasure to meet Bob for the first time in person. Future trips this year might include Colorado and … [Read more...]

Here — from a 1975 book by George Seltzer, The Professional Symphony Orchestra in the United States — is another bit of history. (To go along with the 1951 scene of audiences applauding after each movement of a piece, that I shared in my last post.) Seltzer's book is a collection of many articles, some short, some quite long, including a New Yorker piece from 1960 (if I remember correctly; I don't have the book with me) by Joseph Wechsler that gives the best account of what it's like to play an orchestra piece -— from the musicians' point of … [Read more...]