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?

Yesterday, the Minnesota Orchestra board offered its musicians a new agreement to end the year-long lockout: while the base pay for musicians would see base pay shrink by 25% after three years, the board did offer a one-time $20,000 payout to mitigate the shock.

This is an improvement over previous offers, but the musicians union didn’t take kindly to management circumventing mediator George Mitchell to make the offer directly to them, and certainly didn’t appreciate that it went public.

“We are further offended that they have again broken the confidentiality of the mediator’s process,” said spokesperson Blois Olson. “We encourage management to stop playing games and work through the mediator.”

At least that’s not a “no,”right?

Back in January, halfway through the 2012-13 season, the Cleveland Orchestra announced that its student-ticket sales were up 55% over the previous year, helping to account for a 24% increase in earned revenue. On May 30, the orchestra released its final numbers: a 65% season-over-season increase in student tickets sold, and a 27% increase overall increase in ticket sales.

These are great numbers, but it’s important to note that Cleveland has a $20-million fund to help cover the discount that students receive. Not all orchestras have that cushion to help them absorb the added cost of marketing to students, a notoriously fickle and transient group. 

Yesterday, Tim from Irondequoit inadvertently reported on a falcon abducting a pigeon when he called into John DiTullio on 1280 WHTK to talk about how bad the Bills will be this season; here’s the call.

DiTullio’s awesome for turning this into a great talk-radio moment. Mike Francesa: pay attention.

Another person who makes it worth living here is Ira Jevotovsky. I caught more of his handiwork on a bike ride Monday night:

Keep keeping Rochester weird, guys. 

If you’re a fan of Cold War history and find yourself in Nova Scotia, you should check out the Atlantic Canada Aviation Museum out by the Halifax airport.

Here’s their F-86 Sabre (with daughter), a plane that went into production right after World War II, and entered the Canadian Armed Forces in the 1950s as tensions with the Soviet Union were really heating up:

It also has in its collection a CF-101 Voodoo, the plane that Canada decided purchased from McDonnell in 1961, two years after Diefenbaker canceled the supersonic Avro Arrow (it was a controversial decision, as many believed that the Candadian-made Arrow would have made the country a major global military player in the fight against Communism):

Yesterday, my wife and I went to Rosie’s Hot Buns for dinner on Monroe Avenue (right next to the bong shop). It’s a high-end fast-food joint that sells fancy tasting $4 sandwiches. Get two of them, and you’ve got a good meal.

Rosie’s is just down the block from Dogtown, which makes this our new go-to area for cheap eats, on our own or with the kids. We also like Pizza Stop on State Street (good if you’re over at Hochstein for lessons or a concert) and Bill Gray’s in the ‘burbs (don’t judge me).

In the East End, the new local lunch spot Camarella’s closed after less than a year. Working down in that area is a dismal proposition, and losing this place doesn’t help.

It’s not like I’m going to be going out and getting $10 mimosas for lunch at Fraiche.

Seems as if everyone wants to know how all those music students are going to support themselves when they get out of school.

In next month’s Opera News, Allan Kozinn writes about how conservatories are incorporating career training into their curriculums, and News Hour ran its own report a few weeks ago on the travails of fine-arts students.

Jon Marcus of the Times Higher Education Supplement (UK) put the focus on the new Paul R. Judy Center at Eastman (disclaimer: my employer), which will be dedicated to helping students create their own ensembles, as did Rochester’s own Democrat and Chronicle and RBJ. 

There’s a lot of optimism surrounding new groups like Alarm Will Sound and the International Contemporary Ensemble, but so far the work they create doesn’t pay nearly as well as a even a third-tier orchestra job (granted, there are few of those). More and more, musicians are surviving by piecing together a living from playing a little, teaching a lot, and taking on a part-time job outside of music. 

There’s also a danger with career courses that students might interpret the message as this: if we  write a good resume and find the right photographer for headshots, we can get those few high-paying gigs–or shine brightly enough to be a rich and famous star.

That said, when people ask me what you can do with a music degree, I respond, What can’t you do? Never underestimate the power of intelligent people who love what they do to survive and thrive.

I thought it was a joke when I heard about it a couple of years ago, but Finnish tango is a real thing.

So is German-language-loving dirty ol’ Finnish men, apparently. Sheesh.

Tango came to Helsinki as early as the 1910s, and was at the height of its popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s, when songs like “Satumaa” by Reijo Taipale’s “Satumaa” caught on as indigenous popular music:

Want to learn more? Go here and here. The New York Times recently ran a story about Finnish tango as a dying art; read it here. 

On Deceptive Cadence, Anastasia Tsioulcas praises Vi Hart for “demystifying” serialism. Perhaps the best way to understand twelve-tone composition, though, is to listen to great music written using the technique, which is why I picked these as two of my favorite American symphonies.