Earlier this month the Walker Art Center hosted a symposium on agonism in collaboration with Northern Lights. I only attended a small portion of the week-end's offerings but even a small dose has been enough to keep my mind active for the past two weeks. And what's stuck with me is the idea that there is good work to be done in being a worthy opponent, "a thoroughly dedicated adversary." More on that in just a bit. The first question is, what is agonism? Maybe you all already know all about it but I had to read and think about it before the … [Read more...]

The San Francisco Symphony is celebrating its Centennial this season with gusto -- they've invited six major American orchestras to perform in their home at Davies Symphony Hall, created three national symposia on the state of American orchestras, issued new recordings and produced new television, web, and radio broadcasts, and produced the second American Mavericks festival, the brainchild of the Symphony’s energetic music director, Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT). The festival ended Sunday in San Francisco and now is traveling to … [Read more...]

I wasn't sure whether or not problemization was a word until I looked it up and found that it is one. Problemization is to consider or treat as a problem (Merriam Webster). I've been thinking about this a lot. The reason is that increasingly when you look at a foundation’s grant guidelines you are asked: “What problem are you trying to solve?" I put the following into Google: “Foundation funding what problem are you trying to solve.” The search result: 182 million hits that included dozens of foundations’ guidelines and many … [Read more...]

Stanford Emeritus Professor Robert J. Flanagan's book, The Perilous Life of Symphony Orchestras, Artistic Triumphs and Economic Challenges, was just released from Yale University Press and will be of interest to anyone working in, volunteering for, or listening to orchestras. The slim volume is jammed with interesting data, and its extensive bibliography will be helpful to readers who want to delve even deeper into the subject of the economics of symphony orchestras and their prospects for financial health and artistic vitality. Flanagan's … [Read more...]

On the agenda at a recent Board of Overseers' meeting at the Curtis Institute of Music were past graduates, some with non-traditional careers both in music and not, speaking about the preparation their Curtis education provided them. The backdrop to the conversation was a speech the previous afternoon by Derek Bok, who advocated for the importance of liberal education beyond music as an essential component of an artist's preparation.  The context for the entire discussion was the current state of the classical music field and the idea that … [Read more...]

The Station Resource Group and Walrus Research, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, published a report in June on the Performance of Classical Music Stations.   The report is part of a larger effort at the Station Resource Group to advance thinking around what it would take to expand audiences for public radio stations of all types.  Organized under the project name Grow The Audience, this multi-year effort has convened station leaders, studied high-performing stations, commissioned research, and published provocations … [Read more...]

In a recent book and several articles (Huffington Post, Strategy+Business, Forbes, others - just Google "Spend Shift"), John Gerzema and Michael D'Antonio describe a new breed of consumers they've named "Spend Shifts."   The co-authors say that the Spend Shift movement began before the Great Recession and consists of a large, diverse demographic group who "realize that how they spend money is a form of power, and are moving from mindless consumption to mindful consumption, increasingly taking care to purchase goods and services from sellers … [Read more...]