Thoughts from an Orchestral Clarinetist, Soloist, Teacher
Check out this post, You’re Great; Get Lost! (also available here), a well written, biting review of the motives and repercussions of firing Junichi Hirokami as Columbus Symphony Music Director.
After having very publicly fired their music director for having protested against trying to gut the orchestra, I wonder who the board thinks will agree to [...]
It’s amazing what a group of people can do in a short time when they put their collective mind to it. In the past two weeks the musicians, shut out by their own board and management, went into action and self-produced two concerts, a family concert Friday and a tour de force Saturday in [...]
I am writing in response to the article about the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and the picture of me and my colleague, Mindy Ewing, that was printed on the front page of the Sunday (June 1) Metro section. It is important that members of the community know the backstory of the picture – not [...]
Ron Spigelman of Sticks and Drones, a music culture blog written by two conductors, makes an admirable foray into the swamp of Columbus cultural politics with his analysis of the Dispatch’s article announcing the creation of a second arts panel.
The situation can be summed up with the following analogy, which also applies to board’s decision [...]
I carve a tiny piece of wood off the base of the reed. The shaving isn’t much larger than one or two hairs of daily growth on a man’s face. Almost nothing. I put the reed back on the mouthpiece and fasten it with the ligature. I form an embouchure and play the scale I [...]
We played a family oriented program this afternoon. It involved a quick rehearsal followed by an hour long pops concert. The conductor for this event is a long standing regular with us. He has established himself as our main pops conductor, with good reason. His amiable, energetic and lighthearted demeanor appeals to our pops audiences. [...]
So what?! It doesn’t matter a pile of feathers if it’s not together. Many musicians, good ones, don’t understand this basic fact of life in an orchestra. You have to factor in delay time for acoustics and human response time. So staying with the conductor is not the blanket solution. But it’s not rocket science, [...]