SymphonyNow

What’s the best way to find new audiences for classical music? Not through music-education programs, according to a June 27 column by Anne Midgette, classical-music critic of the Washington Post. More

It started out the same as any other concert by Utah’s Weber State University Symphony Orchestra. But music professor and orchestra conductor Michael A. Palumbo created a stir when he apparently halted a November 13 orchestra performance and asked a noisy audience member to leave the hall. According to spectator accounts More

In an era of shrinking federal and state budgets, more and more arts supporters are stepping forward to make the case about the vital role the arts play in communities and in the lives of young people. This spring, members of the Florida Youth Orchestra traveled all night by bus to the state capital of Tallahassee to make sure legislators got their message. More

California’s Pacific Symphony has been bringing the music to the people for many years. But over the last few months, the orchestra has been encouraging people to connect hands-on  More

The lingering effects of the economic downturn continue to take a toll on orchestras across the country. Enough, in fact, to forget that one of the first organizations to feel the heat was the Honolulu Symphony, which filed for bankruptcy in December 2010 More

Violins were dusted off. Tubas were taken out of the closet. Clarinets were re-assembled. And 53 amateur musicians gave their instruments—and chops—an intense workout at the Minnesota Orchestra Fantasy Camp, where they rehearsed alongside members of the Minnesota Orchestra for two days, September 15 and 16, culminating with a performance of Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances on the orchestra’s season sampler concert. More

This past Saturday, cellist Matt Haimovitz headed down to Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, where the Occupy Wall Street protests against social and economic inequality have been underway since September 17. Once arriving there, he found someone to loan him a 5-gallon plastic bucket, pulled out his 300-year-old Venetian cello and beloved Peccatte bow, sat down on the bucket, and starting playing. More

In a recent essay in New York Magazine, classical-music critic Justin Davidson went public with his struggle to like Philip Glass’s music. “Drugs work differently on different metabolisms, angels appear only to the elect, and I lack the gift of spinning Glassian tedium into bliss,” he wrote. More

What happens when the Bemidji Symphony—a small community orchestra in northern Minnesota—performs Defiant Requiem, a multimedia adaptation of Verdi’s Requiem that incorporates the Holocaust? The chance for a broader dialogue with the local Native American community, for one thing. More

Experts run your marketing department. A CFO with post-graduate degrees handles your money. And your musicians are at the apogee of artistry. But when it comes to your orchestra’s digital-media initiatives, who does the work? Until recently, it might have been the intern. But things are changing—fast—and what was once relegated to the sidelines or handled ad hoc is now a central means for connecting with audiences, communities, and the larger world. More

We’ve all seen it: the new composition that is commissioned with great expectations, premiered with great fanfare, reviewed with great discernment—and then vanishes, seldom to be heard again. But over eighteen months between 2008 and 2010, one work—Joseph Schwantner’s Chasing Light…—was given more than 70 performances. More

Rehearsing and conducting concerts is the central activity for an orchestra conductor, and one that doesn’t vary much, the world over. But Chelsea Tipton II, music director of the Symphony of Southeast Texas, has been spending his summer in an unusual role: rehearsing but rarely performing with a series of local orchestras during the Symphonicity tour of Europe by rock musician Sting. More

Many people have been following the recent contract extension at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what I consider to be some of the noteworthy aspects. I don’t wish to speak so much about the details of the agreement but rather on the process that led to an outcome that successfully addressed the goals of musicians, board, and management. At a time when many orchestras are experiencing strained labor relations, especially in the face of scarce resources, it’s important that we look at a successful outcome. More

Anthony Tommasini’s “Occupy the Arts, a Seat at a Time” in Sunday’s New York Times, has started heated discussions in some quarters about the issue of social equality as it relates to the arts. That article cited the many concerts in New York City and elsewhere in the U.S. that are offered either free or at very low cost, adding, “Classical music has struggled for a long time to fight the perception — an unfair perception — that it is elitist and inaccessible… More

It’s a familiar request to hear at the beginning of a concert: “Please make sure turn off all cell phones during the performance.” However, as orchestras across the country seek to engage new—often younger—audiences, more and more are turning a 180 and encouraging audiences to turn on mobile devices and receive real-time program notes via text message or Twitter, and, if they so desire, respond with their own impressions. Feelings among the wider classical music community are mixed. More

In his first few weeks as music director of the Seattle Symphony, Ludovic Morlot: tossed out the first pitch at a Seattle Mariners game; conducted an opening-night concert at which he also slipped in among the strings to play the violin for Ravel’s Bolero; presided over a day of free music by richly diverse local groups; and led three world premieres, commissioned by the Seattle Symphony, inspired by local music icons Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, and Quincy Jones. Morlot has only been in the job a couple of months, and already he’s taking an only-in-Seattle tack that seems custom-tailored for the Emerald City. More

The numbers don’t lie: eight years of assessments by Teachers College at Columbia University say that children who participate in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s Early Strings Program outperform their peers districtwide by 25 to 30 percent on standardized math, literacy, and science tests. More

What does it take to make the transformation from high-profile soloist to music director of an orchestra? Just ask violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. In 2008, she joined the New Century Chamber Orchestra, a conductorless all-string ensemble based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she was charged with reinvigorating the orchestra and raising its national profile. More