Soviet Union Polemicist On Jazz Music:

“The dry knock of an idiotic hammer penetrates the utter stillness. One, two, three, ten, twenty strikes, and afterwards a wild whistling and squeaking as if a ball of mud was falling into clear water; then follows a rattling, howling and screaming like the clamor of a metal pig, the cry of a donkey or […]

Gender Roles and Krenek

Let me start off this post by noting that Krenek was a very smart man, but lived in a period where in much of Western Democracy, the right for women to vote was limited for much of his youth (In Switzerland for more than half his life!), and that feminist ideas had not wholly penetrated […]

What?

For real:

Mr. Manahan’s unavailability, Mr. Steel said, illuminated another matter for him, that “given the size of the company now, it doesn’t make sense for us to have a music director.”

I know people who have played in the City Opera, and I took a class during my Masters under one of their current […]

Another One Bites the Dust

From The Philly Inquirer:

The board of the 111-year-old Philadelphia Orchestra voted Saturday in favor of a Chapter 11 reorganization. The claim was expected to be filed this weekend in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and the orchestra was expected to list assets at several times liabilities – an equation unusual for businesses […]

Detroit Symphony Shutters Its Doors

Well, the writing was on the wall for that one. I really hope the New York City Opera doesn’t follow them down that rabbit hole.

Detroit Symphony Orchestra officials have suspended the rest of the 2010-2011 season, through June 5. This comes on the heels of striking DSO musicians voting today to turn down management’s […]

Wirklich?

Christopher Knight tells us why Republican’s ideas to cut the arts are stupid:

If you gave me a buck, and next year I returned $18.75 to you, would you think that was a good deal? I would. With savings accounts, money markets and even stocks yielding just a few percentage points on investments these days, […]

There Are Assholes

From the Baltimore Sun:

An unpopular music genre doesn’t make a city ‘world class’ … The phrase ‘world class’ is a propaganda technique used by those who want to shove things down our throats.

Get rid of them, the Ballet and any other useless tax funded ‘entertainment’ that isnt self supporting.

Face it, this isn’t […]

And the Orchestra Played On

Though I don’t believe that music education’s short shrift in curriculum alone is the reason for the past decades marked decline in the Classical audience base, it always deserves pointing out that music education isn’t just about introducing younger folks to traditional art music. In The Sunday New York Times Joanne Lipman contributed an Op-Ed […]

Percentage of Reported Occupations as Musician/Music Teachers

I ran across a really interesting break down of occupational claims created in a data visualization platform called Flare. In it you can search for a specific occupation and the percentage that occupation takes up in the work force. If you search for “musician” you find that the number of people claiming this (or music […]

Smart Children are Left Behind, But So Are Artistic Children

A week ago Tom Loveless and Michael J. Petrilli had an Op-Ed article ran in the New York Times called “Smart Child Left Behind“. In it, they make the case that high-achieving students are left out of the equation when it comes to academic gains as demanded by the No Child Left Behind Act.

First, […]