Musicians as Orchestra Executives

Back in September 2012, the board of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra plucked Mark Niehaus from the ranks of its trumpet section and appointed him president and CEO. On Wednesday, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra replaced disgraced executive director Richard Dare with acting principal oboist James Roe.

Hopefully, hiring from within will help both of these orchestras avoid the distrust between musicians, management, and board has exacerbated so many of the recent crises in American orchestras. It’s heartening, I hope it works, and it will be exciting to see if it becomes a trend.

Orwell Everywhere

Thanks to Eric Snowdon and the NSC, Orwell’s back!

Morten Hoi Jensen reminded us on Salon.com that it isn’t Orwell’s depiction in 1984 of a totalitarian state that makes him relevant to today, but his commentary on the abuse of language by people in power, about how they can use words to hide intentions even as they create an air of legitimacy:

This isn’t meant to suggest that Orwell is not relevant to the current debate about the politics of electronic surveillance. … (but) When NSA director James Clapper said he’d responded “in the least untruthful way” to Congress in March by telling them that the NSA does not intentionally collect any data of American citizens, Orwell’s famous definition of political language—that it is “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”— seemed particularly apt.

Jason Slotkin points out the irony of Orwellian becoming a hackneyed adjective thrown around in political discourse today.

Orwell crusaded against clichés like few public figures have before or since. As he said in his widely cited 1946 writing treatise Politics and the English Language: “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”

… The fact his name is used so fluidly in a political context, to describe things Orwell supposedly wouldn’t like, only heightens the sad irony of its rhetorical fate. As an essayist, Orwell railed against and lampooned the tropes of contemporary political writing.

We also have articles from the Daily Beast telling us why we aren’t living in Oceania, and one from the Washington Times telling us why we are.

And back in April, Geoffrey Pullum accused Orwell of “intellectual dishonesty,” a term that neither Orwell nor Oliver Strunk would particularly approve of. (What’s intellectual dishonesty? Is it different from physical dishonesty? Spiritual dishonesty? Gastroenterological? Someone is either honest or dishonest.)

Finding the Right Way to Say No

Writing copy that tells people what they can’t do is hard, and the effort that organizations put into finding the right way to say unpleasant things says a lot.

When Wegmans was building its new store on East Avenue in Rochester, the word on the street was that there would be an underground parking garage for customers. There is indeed a parking lot under the new store, but it’s for employees. Here’s how everyone found out:

The main parking lot is cramped beyond belief; the blunt boilerplate language that drivers encounter when they try to enter the underground lot only exacerbates the sense of frustration.

Here’s a more successful example.

Yesterday in Flower City, Rochester’s annual jazz festival opened. Here are the signs that organizers put up to alleviate cutting in at pre-concert ticket lines:

This sign, while a little wordy, does much to send a positive message, even as it discourages people from doing something they might very much want to do (the lines for the festival events are all insanely long). It reminds everyone that the festival is about having a good time and asks that people respect the experience. It also uses key words that emphasize inclusivity: “good vibe,” “friends,” and, the magic word, “Please.”

Mapping Inequality

In a recent post, I lifted some data from the Detroit Free Press that showed just how little the Motor City should care whether the city’s emergency manager sells a few pieces of art to cover its bills.

That data was part of the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey, and today The Atlantic highlighted a group of maps that use the survey’s data to paint a revealing picture of America’s income inequality.

You can view the maps here.

The Loneliness of the Young Classical Music Fan

Through Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish, I came across a blog post by 22-year-old Mary Sydnor, who bemoans the dearth of fellow classical-music travelers her age:

Sadly, at age 22, it is not an exaggeration for me to admit that I have no one my own age willing to discuss my greatest passion with me: classical music. I’m sure there must be other millennials out there who scrimp and save for yearly orchestra subscriptions or who’d prefer to party with Poulenc instead of P. Diddy (is that who the kids are listening to these days?), but I have yet to meet them.

Granted, the classical-music audience is predominantly 50 and over, but it’s hard to believe that in a city like Philadelphia there aren’t other 20-somethings out there going to concerts. The Philadelphia Orchestra is certainly trying to draw them out: it has a $25 subscription package for university students and a young professionals membership program.

John Tortorella’s a Real Bully. Don’t Be Like John Tortorella.

I am so glad I didn’t have to learn this lesson the way that John Tortorella did: no one likes a bully.

Last week, the New York Rangers unexpectedly fired Tortorella as their coach. He is infamous for showing utter contempt to the media, but reports have surfaced that his abuse of players led to his ouster. Certainly, speaking hard truths to players is part of a coach’s job, but criticizing them in public? Not so much.

If you act like a mean jerk, eventually people will assume you’re a mean jerk and tune you out. It’s the fast track to alienation–from your job, but also from family and friends. Reading about Tortorella reminded me of how important it is to keep my own abrasiveness in check, both at home and at work (because I love my family, like my job, and want to keep both).

Tortorella’s now-former boss said after the firing, “Every coach has a shelf life.” Because of his behavior, Tortorella greatly shortened his. The next time you want to have at someone, think about whether it’s worth it. It probably isn’t. Don’t be like John Tortorella.

Where the Money Goes in the Arts

Back in October 2011, the National Institute for Responsible Philanthropy found that 55 percent of foundation money goes to the top two percent of organizations by budget size.

To some degree, this makes sense, as large arts institutions have the staff time to spend on writing grant proposals, and smaller organizations may not require the same amount of cash to achieve more focused missions. But in the same study, the National Institute for Responsible Philanthropy also revealed that only 10 percent of arts funding supports underserved communities, and concluded that in the arts, as the report’s author Holly Sidford put it, “philanthropy is using its tax-exempt status primarily to benefit wealthier, more privileged institutions and populations.”

Here’s a link to the full report.

These findings underscore Matthew Yglesias’s point about class and tax-exempt giving, and shows just how small the worlds of arts managers like Thomas P. Campbell really are.

Close the Gap: Make Fewer "Charitable" Gifts Tax Exempt

Matthew Yglesias weighed in last week on tax-exempt giving to nonprofit organizations:

…it’d really be worth scaling this all back a great deal. A rich guy giving a gift to an elite university that mostly serves the educational needs of rich kids is not particularly worthy of a tax subsidy. That’s doubly true when we all know that the “gift” is in some respects a bribe to boost the admissions prospects of his own family members. We don’t have a shortage of political advocacy in the United States. God is not going to become angry at us and punish us if our churches become less splendid. Due to the progressive rate structure of the income tax, these tax deductions are very much a way of increasing the social and political clout of the rich and don’t seem to inspire a ton of charity in the sense of helping poor people.

In addition to tolerating a tax code that exempts from taxation multi-million dollar gifts that uphold an elite status quo, we live in a world where the NFL–whose franchises bring in hundreds of millions in revenue each season–is considered a nonprofit. Maybe its time we tighten things up.

"Mahler Meets Moneyball" and the Myth of a New-Music Audience

Last week, Tom Jacobs of the Pacific Standard reported on a recent paper in the International Journal of Research in Marketing that examined what compels people to buy tickets to an orchestra concert. Jacobs felt that Wagner Kamatura and Carl Schimmel’s research–“Mahler meets Moneyball“–upset assumptions about new music by showing that “less-popular works written before 1900 have a stronger negative impact on occupancy than less-popular works from after the turn of the 20th century.”

There were plenty of other things that, according to Kamatura and Schimmel, actively enticed concertgoers (a big-name star like Josh Bell and familiar works by Beethoven and Mozart) so saying that contemporary music doesn’t drive people away as much as second-tier Romanticism is hardly an endorsement, and certainly not a revolutionary upending of conventional wisdom.

So many people in concert-music circles want to convince themselves that it’s only weak-kneed artistic directors who are keeping new music from a willing-and-ready-audience. As a result, they’ll overemphasize the importance of points made by researches like Kamatura and Schimmel to keep their own hopes and prejudices alive.

The truth is, programming unfamiliar music is hard. There’s a lot of inertia to overcome and there isn’t much of an audience out there screaming for new stuff. I think it’s essential to the art form, and essential to keeping adventurous listeners engaged, to push musical boundaries but we can’t kid ourselves: it will rarely be a short-term, single-ticket moneymaker.

Detroit and the Myopia of Nonprofit Arts Organizations

In its Arts, Briefly section today, The New York Times reported on news that Detroit’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, is contemplating selling some of the Detroit Institute of the Arts’s collection to cover the city’s $15 million debt. Metropolitan Museum president and CEO Thomas P. Campbell predicted that the “disheartening reports out of Detroit today will undoubtedly shock and outrage the city’s residents.”

Let’s look at some data that Campbell probably didn’t consider before making his comment:

The median household income in Detroit is $25,192 (the national figure is $50,502).
36% of Detroit residents live below the poverty line (which is $11,170, $23,050 for a family of four).
57% of children live in poverty in Detroit, three times the national rate.
The high-school graduation rate in Detroit is under 25%; in 2011, the Michigan government approved a cost-cutting plan for school closures in the city that would increase high-school class size to 60 students per classroom.

Campbell’s words speak to the myopia that non-profit arts organizations suffer from when it comes to the constituencies they purport to serve. For most arts managers “the city” constitutes a small number of well-heeled donors that give thousands–millions, even–in exchange for decision making power and access; the job of the arts manager is to keep these people happy. Membership holders and ticket buyers fortunate enough to bask in the glow of reflected wealth are barely within the field of vision. Others without money are considered only occasionally, mostly through “outreach” programs.

In a crumbling city with overwhelming economic problems affecting a huge number of its residents, it’s worth asking whose needs an arts organization is really serving and whether resources should be used differently. Many arts managers don’t have the bravery to ask these questions. The hope is that, in Detroit and elsewhere, someone will have the vision to come up with honest answers.

Will West Sixth Win By Taking the Low Road?

Magic Hat and Kentucky beer company West Sixth are currently embroiled in a trademark-infringement fight that has become a very public battle. West Sixth is the underdog here, but it’s doing itself no favors with its sarcastic, overblown, immature attacks on social media. Here’s an example from a recent post on Facebook, where the company addresses Magic Hat directly:

We saw that you finally decided to hire a PR person to reply to our petition from yesterday. I suppose after more than 10,000 people signed it, you couldn’t ignore it any more.

Since you decided to publish our letters (which I hope everyone takes the time to read, they’re hilarious), we also want to make sure everyone can see the full text of the bogus lawsuit. As you can see there are some crazy claims in it, and some that even look like it might have been copied and pasted from other lawsuits – what’s that craziness about us moving into South Carolina?

There are probably a lot of people who will support West Sixth no matter how it acts, but there are many who will be turned off by its antics–particularly when they see that Magic Hat really has a case here:

The best thing West Sixth can do is keep as quiet and polite as possible, and use this publicity as a chance to focus on its product instead of its logo (it really is a bad logo; West Sixth: take this opportunity to change it).

Zachary Woolfe Explains Yuja Wang’s Dress

Here’s how Zachary Woolfe explains the significance of Yuja Wang’s short, tight dresses:

… the tiny dresses and spiky heels draw your focus to how petite Ms. Wang is, how stark the contrast between her body and the forcefulness she achieves at her instrument. That contrast creates drama. It turns a recital into a performance.

I appreciate that Woolfe doesn’t revert to gape mouthed aawking, but doesn’t ignore the issue either. His is as good an interpretation of how Wang’s dress affects a listener as any I’ve seen. (Another worthy read on how critics address the dress is here, by Anne Midgette.) That said, there still is something lascivious about the whole affair, particularly after reading the “so short, so tight” comments made by other middle-age male critics.

Onto another issue: someone needs to get Woolfe to lay off the purple prose. Check this out, from the same review:

The liquidity of her phrasing in the second movement of Scriabin’s Sonata No. 2 eerily evoked the sound of woodwinds. In that composer’s Sonata No. 6 she juxtaposed colors granitic and gauzy to eerily brilliant effect before closing the written program with a rabid rendition of the one-piano version of “La Valse,” accentuating the sickliness of Ravel’s distorted waltzes.

Holy cow!