Abu Bratsche

An AFM insider to head FMCS

This seems both good news and well-deserved:

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals for key administration posts: Peggy E. Gustafson, Inspector General, Small Business Administration and George H. Cohen, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, Director.

Absolutely nothing to do with orchestras

Every so often the diligent websurfer will come across a site with which he feels an immediate affinity; it's like walking into a small bookstore run by someone who shares your taste in books. I had that experience today, and here's the site.

Here's a link on the site that will make you grateful you live in an era that has satellite technology. And here's one that may put you off Burger King permanently.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. And which Reger work for solo viola were we in the middle of?

(late addition from another website). An amazing re-creation (with actual audio and some video at the end) of unionized workers at work. The overlaying text is from the cockpit voice recorder; the rest is from ATC tapes.

The Germans really did invent music

The New York Times reports that the oldest musical instrument found to date was recently discovered near Ulm in Germany:

At least 35,000 years ago, in the depths of the last ice age, the sound of music filled a cave in what is now southwestern Germany, the same place and time early Homo sapiens were also carving the oldest known examples of figurative art in the world.

Scientists say that this bone flute, found at Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany, is at least 35,000 years old.

Music and sculpture — expressions of artistic creativity, it seems — were emerging in tandem among some of the first modern humans when they began spreading through Europe or soon thereafter.

Archaeologists Wednesday reported the discovery last fall of a bone flute and two fragments of ivory flutes that they said represented the earliest known flowering of music-making in Stone Age culture. They said the bone flute with five finger holes, found at Hohle Fels Cave in the hills west of Ulm, was “by far the most complete of the musical instruments so far recovered from the caves” in a region where pieces of other flutes have been turning up in recent years.

Mozart would have been pleased to learn that the first musical instrument may have been invented within a couple of hundred miles of where he was born. He would have been less pleased to learn that the instrument first invented was a flute.

Another thinker on thoughts by two thinkers

Elaine Calder, President (and CEO) of the Oregon Symphony, had some thoughts in a comment about a previous post that are worth highlighting:

Here's one orchestra manager's simple-minded response: when the Dow gets back to 14,000 we should all be restored - our endowments; donors' portfolios, incomes and contributions; and staff and musicians' compensation.

It's not just the rowboats taking on water

The mighty Boston Symphony, the USS Iowa of orchestras, has started the pumps, according to the Phoenix Network:

Another painful day for the culture industry. As Harvard University announced 275 layoffs, across the river, Boston Symphony Orchestra Managing Director Mark Volpe told employees at a full staff meeting that the BSO is laying off 10 staffers: four in the marketing/press department, four in development, and two elsewhere in the organization. According to a staffer who was in the meeting, Volpe said the BSO's board requested the cuts as a result of recent losses in the endowment. 

In December, Volpe announced a hiring freeze due to "heightened financial challenges facing the BSO as a result of the global economic crisis" and convened an Operating Budget Review Group to investigate cost-cutting possibilities, the Boston Globe reported at the time. 

An official BSO announcement is expected imminently. Developing . . .

Boston cutting staff, Chicago taking pay cuts, the Met talking about a 10% cut for unionized staff, Detroit (according to a rumor doing the rounds) being asked to lose a shocking number of weeks...strange days. Probably time to get out the frogicide and send all the first-born to summer camps, preferably on another planet.

Thoughts on the thoughts of two thinkers

Drew McManus at Adaptistration wrote about restoration after concessions:

One of the more interesting byproducts of the League convention last week was the level of frustration among some managers over whether or not recent rounds of reductions in expenditures were temporary or fixed. According to most attendees I spoke with, there was a strong aversion to words like “restoration” and “temporary;” in fact, serious efforts were underway to begin crafting new jargon to avoid those terms…

But here’s where the issue becomes murky. When I talk to executives about why they have issues with including restoration as an important component in concessionary bargaining, it always circles around to the old notion of structural deficits (which is really just more jargon for setting artificial limitations). The danger here is that some executives are allowing sudden, difficult changes in revenue streams to impact long term decision making processes before finding out what the “new economy” really is (or if it even exists).

One of the ironies of the current economic storm for orchestras is that the revenue source that has tanked the most  in many places is precisely what, over the past decade or so, has been viewed as the salvation of orchestras: endowment income. But, of course, history suggests that the value of endowments will recover. Proposing permanent cuts around a temporary downturn suggest an agenda that’s not driven strictly by the “new economy.”

Wagner on violists

“The viola is commonly (with rare exceptions indeed) played by infirm violinists, or by decrepit players of wind instruments who happen to have been acquainted with a stringed instrument once upon a time: at best a competent viola player occupies the first desk, so that he may play the occasional soli for that instrument: but, I have even seen this function performed by the leader of the first violins. It was pointed out to me that in a large orchestra, which contained eight violas, there was only one player who could deal with the rather difficult passages in one of my later scores!

"Such a state of things may be excusable from a humane point of view; it arose from the older methods of instrumentation, where the role of the viola consisted for the most part in filling up the accompaniments; and it has since found some sort of justification in the meager method of instrumentation adopted by the composers of Italian operas, whose works constitute an important element in he repertoire of the German opera theaters.”

Project Gutenberg is truly a marvelous creation; this was from Wagner’s On Conducting, which I found with my new iPhone and downloaded from the Project Gutenberg site in a few seconds.

My favorite run-out

… is a concert we do toward the end of every season in a town called Fond du Lac (which, in these here parts, is pronounced “Fawn Doo Lack”). It’s an outdoor event in a lovely little bandshell at the bottom of a small hill in a grassy park. And they always serve brats and hot dogs for $2, and pie (rhubarb is my favorite) with ice cream for $1.50. And it’s only about an hour drive from my house.

iViolist

I was interviewed for a recent MSO podcast, for anyone interested in what violists think of viola jokes, the meaning of life, and sailing.

I played two Mahler 8s

or maybe one "Symphony of Two Thousand"...and I didn't even get this lousy T-shirt. But it was a nice event nonetheless; many standing ovations for our departing Music Director in particular. And it seemed like today, in particular, was a good performance. Of course, not being a fan of the piece, it's a little hard for me to judge. But the orchestra played well, the singers sounded great (hundreds of them), and Andreas got a nice flow going.

It was nice to see people outside the hall before the concert with signs asking for tickets.