A couple of weeks after reading about how music can bolster the academic performance of students in low-income schools comes some depressing news that underscores the importance of using everything at our disposal to close the education gap between rich and poor.

Research by Anne Fernald, as reported in The New York Times, has found that by the age of two, children in low-income communities (where the median income is $23,900) know 30% fewer words than more affluent kids (in areas with a median income of $69,000); this gap in vocabulary can result in serious discrepancy in reading comprehension later on.

On a related note, Dylan Matthews on the Washington Post‘s Wonkblog tells us that those of us brought up in low-income households have brains less able to handle stressful situations and control emotions, according to a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Now football referees are doing it too:

When musicians stop concerts because a cellphone ring–example include Christian Zacharias and Alan Gilbert–or unfortunately timed cough they are being disrespectful for both the music and the audience as a whole.

I’ve been at concerts where I’ve had to put up with an errant beep or hack, and although they were annoying, the disruptions have always been quick and minor. What I’ve never wanted is to have a show come to a complete stop, to completely halt the continuity of a piece I’m following. Behavior like Zacharias’s and Gilbert’s puts their own egos above that broader experience of a piece.

We found out this week that George Washington University discriminates against poor people when it picks its freshmen; here’s how it works, as reported by Jordan Weissmann on Atlantic.com:

First the admissions office picks a class based on merit. Then they move some financially needy applicants to the waitlist, which all but amounts to a rejection, and admit richer applicants in their place to make the books balance.

Apparently they are common knowledge to most in the higher-education business, but I also learned all sorts of tricks that schools use to keep out the hoi polloi, such as “gapping,” as described by Inside Higher Ed: 

… only a small subset of colleges pledges to meet the full need of all students they admit. That means that for most institutions, “gapping” has become the norm. That’s when a college admits a student, tells her that she probably needs $X to afford to enroll, and then provides a package that is less than $X–sometimes considerably so.

As Weissmann put it in his Atlantic piece, the point is to send a very direct message to applicants; “kids who fail to take the hint just sink deeper into debt.”

And they sink deeper into debt in part because banks are assholes. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau received 3,800 complaints last year from student loan borrowers–primarily Sallie Mae, Wells Fargo, Citi and JPMorgan Chase–about loan services, according to piece on Salon.com. In some cases, the banks lied about refinancing options, ignored requests of students to apply payments to particular loans with higher interest rates, and just plain lied about late payments.  

Over on Eastman’s new blog, grad student Cahill Smith fills us in on Nicolas Medtner (1880-1951):

While he would have certainly objected to this description–his style is completely unique–the quickest way to describe Medtner’s music is as a cross between Beethoven and Rachmaninoff. Medtner was a self-proclaimed follower of Beethoven and wrote music with a similar thematic unity, often using the smallest basic materials to create massive structures and dramatic contrasts: if themes were money, Medtner could feed a family of four with a few nickels and dimes.

Medtner’s familial ties to Europe might explain his affinity for Beethoven and the mainstream classical tradition, but according to Smith, the composer’s music also shows the influence of mother Russia:

At the same time, Medtner imbued his works with exotic Russian harmonies that echo Rachmaninoff or Scriabin. Intense drama, lyricism, fantasy, and childlike innocence are all to be found in Medtner’s music.

Smith will be performing an all-Medtner program in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall on Sunday. Here’s a video preview: 

Because I don’t really think the world needs more hedge-fund managers or bullying billionaires, Joan Lipman’s New York Times opinion piece linking musical training to career success left me cold. 

Much more heartening was this recent article in the Atlantic by Lori Miller Kase. Kase looks at  ongoing studies from researchers at Northwestern, USC, and University of California, San Diego on music programs for at-risk children in low-income areas of Southern California. In all three cases, researches are finding that music dramatically improves cognitive, social, and emotional development, placing children in a better position to succeed in school:

Though these studies are far from over, researchers, as well as the parents and teachers of the study subjects, are already noticing a change in the kids who are studying music. Preliminary results suggest that not only does school and community-based music instruction indeed have an impact on brain functioning, but that it could possibly make a significant difference in the academic trajectory of lower-income kids.

Unfortunately, too few school districts in low-income areas have the money for music music programs:

Ironically, these findings come at a time when 1.3 million of the nation’s public elementary school students receive no specific instruction in music—and the children who do not have access to music education are disproportionately those who attend high-poverty schools. While wealthier school districts can compensate for budget cuts that reduce or eliminate music programs with private funding, low-income school districts cannot, so the kids who might benefit most from music education are often the least likely to get it.

What’s left are programs such as the Harmony Project in Los Angeles, or any number of projects here in Rochester (Urban Strings, Strings for Success, RocMusic) that provide valuable help, but which do not operate as part of a school’s curriculum. Hopefully, the work that Kase cites will help convince district administrators and state politicians that music deserves a central place in all students’ lives, not just those with rich parents. 

James B. Stewart focused on endowment mismanagement in his Friday New York Times article on the New York City Opera‘s bankruptcy and spread the blame around: not only were board chair Susan Baker and general and artistic director Paul Kellogg responsible for “a shocking lack of financial discipline” leading up to the 2008 and 2009 withdrawls that took $24.1 million from the endowment, but New York’s attorney general Andrew Cuomo was also at fault for failing to carry out state law and provide effective oversight.

According to Stewart, nonprofit organizations must receive approval from the attorney general’s office to cut into their endowments. The NYCO got that approval in 2008 without notifying the Wallace Fund, whose restricted funds were going to be use. That notification is part of state law, and the AG also didn’t contact the fund managers. 

When NYCO went back to the attorney general’s office in 2009, its came with a turnaround plan that it said would result in a surplus in 2010-11 and a $2,000,000 endowment replenishment. Given the seven-figure deficits that NYCO had been running for years, the plan seemed far fetched; nonetheless, the company once again got state approval.

As little serious oversight that the attorney general and his staff gave, it’s up for debate as to how much they should have provided. Imagine the outcry if the attorney general had stopped the moves. Nonprofit organizations are independent for a reason, and if we don’t want the government involved in running our cultural efforts, we can’t blame it when they fail. 

As the Wall Street Journal publishes a sketchy report of a deal to merge the bankrupt New York City Opera with another Big Apple cultural institution, John Godfrey and Jason Schneiderman of Nonprofit Quarterly summarize everything that led up to the company’s chapter 11 filing, putting a focus on the fiduciary irresponsibility of the board.

The news (published rumor?) that horrible human being David H. Koch passed on bailing out the NYCO because it produced an opera based on Anna Nicole Smith, whom Koch hates, is hilariously depressing, and a case study in just how sleazy it can be to work in non-profit performing arts. The New York Times recounts NYCO head George Steel’s night out with Montgomery Burns:

The opera they saw, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Anna Nicole,” tells the more-or-less true life story of Anna Nicole Smith, a former Playboy model who married an octogenarian oil tycoon, J. Howard Marshall II, and who waged a fierce battle with his heirs over his estate after he died. Mr. Marshall, it turned out, had owned 16 percent of the Koch family’s business, Koch Industries. When Mr. Steel asked Mr. Koch if he could make further gifts to save the company, Mr. Koch demurred, telling Mr. Steel that the Marshall family might be less than pleased, according to a person familiar with their conversation. 

Wow. Awkward.

If you’re looking for historical background on the New York City Opera, Fred Cohen’s piece in Opera News is the place to go.

The St. Louis Symphony is touting the financial results of its last fiscal year as good news. Apparently they had raised $25.5 million in operating revenue–and suffered only a $2.62 million deficit (covered through separate fundraising). And it was their smallest deficit since 2005.

Glad to see that things are looking up, but one season with a small, manageable deficit does not erase history, nor does it guarantee success in the future. The orchestra has been running large deficits for almost a decade every year, resulting in debt that can constrain the orchestra as in plans its upcoming seasons.

A day-by-day recap:

On Monday, the Minnesota Orchestra started it right by announcing it was canceling its Carnegie Hall concerts.

Osmo Vanska quit on Tuesday, as did the orchestra’s Composer Institute head, Aaron Jay Kernis.

Wednesday started miserably when my boss, Eastman’s dean Doug Lowry, passed away. Later in the day, we found out that Carnegie Hall’s stage hands were on strike because they wanted to control of its educations spaces (the strike is over now).

New York City Opera officially declared bankruptcy on Thursday. 

TGIF, eh?