Category: AJBlogs

Hollein is still optimistic about not being the CEO, but will that last?

When he started the publication Radio Free Jazz, he didn’t know it, and he, would become a legend.

Musicians can, with the right management in place, identify not as “us vs them,” but as part of the big circle of the orchestra.

Years ago, before I was shown the door, I briefly taught at the Manhattan School of Music within their graduate program for aspirant orchestral musicians. My intention was to impart some knowledge about the history of the orchestra in order to shed light on the decline of orchestras and of orchestral performance – and to suggest that young musicians might be able contribute constructively.

The Pacific Northwest is home to a dozens of superior jazz musicians. By no means are all of them of them in Seattle and Portland, the attention-getting large cities of western Washington and Oregon. Dozens manage to find work playing in Spokane, Eugene, Bend, Yakima — and increasingly in the region’s burgeoning winery tasting rooms and restaurants.

I always proceed with fear and trembling when I venture into the topic of marketing. As I have said in the past, I am not a marketer. Nevertheless, there continue to be numerous valuable lessons …

Back in the 1990s, Harvey Lichtenstein – who recreated the Brooklyn Academy of Music – invited me to lunch and asked me if I wanted to run an orchestra.

Max Hollein, the Met’s new director, who spoke confidently and compellingly during our informal NYC lunches while he was directing three Frankfurt museums, twice surprised me in the space of one week with his uneasy, hesitant delivery during introductory remarks …

Conservatory education has been changing. Not everywhere, but in many places. New ideas, new thoughts about what education for classical musicians should be. What you’re going to read here comes from Brian Pertl, the extraordinary dean of the Lawrence Conservatory, at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.

Emil Viklický, Humoresque (NCML)
Last spring, Czech pianist Emil Viklický traveled from Prague to visit relatives in the American Midwest. Never one to forgo a playing opportunity, while he was there he gave a concert at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.