Category: music

The Australian government is opening an inquiry into the health of the country’s six major symphony orchestras. “Three of the six symphony orchestras were flagged in a recent Australian National Audit Office report as having had difficulty continuing as going concerns in 2002, and two, the Adelaide and Queensland symphonies, will post deficits for 2003.”

“The Fort Wayne (Indiana) Philharmonic is expected to report a $300,000 budget shortfall at the close of the 2003-04 season and may have to mortgage its building.”

This week Mariss Jansons leaves his post as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony. “Jansons inherited an ensemble of first-rate musicians. And with that beaming smile and charming personality, he navigated them to warmer artistic waters. If they were choppy at times, it’s clear Pittsburgh and its orchestra ultimately benefited from him as captain, and he with them. The city that repaired his heart with a defibrillator and warmed it with a cordial writing campaign received in return the kind of passionate performances that result in the loftiest of musical standards.”

“With potential candidates streaming into the vacuum next season — including Marin Alsop, Martin Haselbock, Peter Oundjian and Mark Wigglesworth — it may take a year even to name a designate. Pinchas Zukerman comes often next year as a pseudo music director and Hans Graf will lead the PSO on an important European tour in 2005, but both appear to be far down the list. Candidates such as Donald Runnicles, Alan Gilbert, Leonard Slatkin and Antonio Pappano may now be in the running, though they need to get in front of the orchestra.”

A recent study shows that the Cleveland Institute of Music “as an annual economic impact in Ohio of about $92.3 million. The firm surveyed students, faculty, staff and audience members to come up with the figure, which surprised even the Impact Economics consultant who did the study.”

“Across the nation, record stores are being hit with a perfect storm of challenges. Aggressive competition from Best Buy and other big box retailers, Internet piracy, online music shopping and slumping CD sales have pushed many smaller stores out of business or to the brink of bankruptcy. The survivors are having to rework decades-old business models. And it’s not just store owners who are singing a sad tune.”

Harvard professor Terry Fisher has unveiled a plan that would pay artists for their music and allow (even encourage) rampant downloading. “Fisher advocates an alternative compensation system that would pay artists based on the popularity of their music. Artists would first have to register their work with the copyright office, which would track how many times that work was downloaded. Revenue generated from taxes on things like Internet access and the sale of MP3 players would then be used to pay the artists.”

The entire board of Scottish Opera should resign to protest the impossible position the government has put them in. “Five years on from the devolution settlement and all those lofty words about the arts being put at the centre of Scottish life, the company’s programme has been cut to just one new production. It is facing hefty redundancies. Confidence is low. Morale among the 240 staff is at rock bottom. Given all the rhetoric expended by the arts and political establishment in Scotland, what is unfolding here is shocking, and the position in which the directors have been put is wholly invidious. They are effectively being asked by the Executive to collaborate in an attack on the artistic base which they as directors are duty bound to defend.”

The ailing St. Louis Symphony won’t ask voters to join the city’s zoo-museum district that distributes $50 million for St. Louis cultural institutions. “Some observers believe the St. Louis Symphony serves too wealthy an audience to need tax support. ‘That is always going to hurt the Symphony. Most voters are not Symphony-goers, and they think it’s elitist. Voters look at what they really need, and funding the Symphony would be one of the last things voters would support.”

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s new CEO, Lawrence Tamburri, has spent his first several months on the job attempting to improve the orchestra’s climate of communication. From brown bag lunches with PSO musicians to private gladhanding sessions with the city’s cultural and financial elite, Tamburri has reportedly done much in a short time to raise the PSO’s profile and improve its image in the eyes of the community. But there could be a downside to the good word of mouth: a perception is beginning to develop that the PSO’s financial problems are in the past, which could not be further from the truth.