The Academy of Vocal Arts, located in Philadelphia, Pa, will conclude its 2008-09 season with a production of Donizetti’s most famous opera, Lucia di Lammermoor. Performances are scheduled for May 2, 5, and 7 in the Helen Corning Warden Theater at AVA. May 9 at the Gordon Theater at Rutgers/Camden. May 12 and 14 at Centennial Hall, Haverford, and May 16 at Central Bucks South High School in Warrington. All performances begin at 7:30 p.m.
Maestro Christofer Macatsoris conducts the AVA Opera Orchestra and award-winning resident artists. Among them are soprano Angela Meade, who made her Metropolitan Opera debut last season in Ernani. Tenor Michael Fabiano, who debuted at La Scala Milan last spring, will make his Metropolitan Opera debut next season in Verdi’s Stiffelio. Joshua Major is the stage director for this production. For more information about The Academy of Vocal Arts click here.
To read more about about Donizetti and Lucia di Lammermoor click here.
This is a continuation of my series The Musical Universe. I have received some interesting feedback on my previous posts and I really appreciate it. My first post in the Musical Universe series was about a black hole emanating a B-flat tone. My second post was about the Rhythm of the Sun. If you haven’t had a chance to read these, you can click here to catch up. This piece today is going to discuss a very interesting phenomenon that was detected in the rings of Saturn. It was discovered from experiments conducted by the Cassini space probe which is orbiting the planet Saturn. While the probe was beaming radio transmissions back to earth through the rings of Saturn, a harmonic rhythmic pattern was discovered. This was very much a surprise to the scientists. They detected order in such a potentially chaotic scenario. Here is an excerpt from NASA’s Jet Propulson Laboratory:
The pattern was detected when the radio on board the Cassini spacecraft sent out three signals toward Earth. The signals crossed the Saturn’s rings, and their frequencies were separated by scattering from the ring particles. Once the signals were captured by Earth-based antennas of NASA’s Deep Space Network, Cassini scientists saw a regular pattern in the received signal frequencies.
“The signals showed that the particle groups were arranged in an unexpectedly regular formation that had ‘rhythm within the rings of Saturn’”, said Marouf. “Each particle is in its own orbit, and sometimes they collide and move apart as their velocities change. As a result, you have particles bunched together into dense groups that extend across the ring in harmony with each other.”
To read more about this mission and the rhythm in Saturn’s rings click here.
This is the next installment in my blog series “The Art of the Deficit”. Part 3 will focus on the “Productivity Gap” in the symphony orchestra. Part 1 was an introduction to this series focusing on the dysfunctional business model of the modern American symphony orchestra. Part 2 focused on the lack of government funding and the resulting operational cash flow coming from the private sector. In Part 3 “Productivity Gap” I intend to dig deeper into these organizations to see how rising labor costs affect their bottom line and the lack of productivity affects the financial stability of organizations.
Productivity is defined by measuring the output of production, per the unit of input. Labor productivity is usually described in terms of output per worker per hour. There are several formulas and theories that help economists draw conclusions about the productivity of different industries. In the case of the symphony orchestra, there are the musicians, admin staff, and costs of production(output). This is in relation to the concerts(input) performed. Unlike industries such as agriculture or industry, orchestras need the same amount of people to play the specific repertoire as they did hundreds of years ago. They are virtually unchanged. If a Mahler symphony used over 100 people a century ago when it was composed and premiered, the same amount of people are used today. In terms of productivity, orchestras cannot use a specific technology, innovation or new business idea to produce the same product with less people and in turn less cost. When this wall is encountered, this is known as a productivity gap.
Wages and labor costs need to rise in order to keep up with the inflation of all goods and services throughout the general economy. A symphony orchestra is a very labor intensive situation. The payrolls(output) can be quite substantial, in relationship to the concerts(input) produced. The concert performance is the product. The nature of the concert business leaves ensembles open for business for only a hand full of hours. If an orchestra plays two concerts in a given week, they are only in their setting for about five hours. These organizations have difficulty penetrating new markets, attracting new customers and shrinking their workforce. The output rises without any gains in input. This is where the productivity gap comes into the equation. It is in this situation, where the imbalances take effect. This is partially the nature of the beast. From an artistic point of view, professional organizations want to be as true to the score and the composers wishes as possible. I agree with this completely on an artistic level, however the macro effect of having such a labor intensive situation can take its toll on the budget of an orchestra. These are fixed cost systems with relatively little mobility to change their economic models. This leads many ensembles into a financial conundrum.
I disagree with the notion that orchestras are supposed to lose money because they are non-profits with an artistic mission. It is in this balance that is the biggest concern. When output rises without any correlation to the input, the deficit balance becomes a real problem. Most of the budget difference is made up with charitable donations. In Part 2, I talked about how most of the money for the arts comes from the private sector. It is very important to the patrons that their money is used properly and can be accounted for. When these balances become so out of whack that the survival of the organization is in question, their reaction is going to be to pull back and not invest their money in these particular groups. The cardinal rule of the non-profit world is to never show financial weakness because nobody wants to save a sinking ship.
Entrepreneurship and new ideas are going to be the solutions to these problems. A perfect example of this is what the Metropolitan Opera is doing with its broadcasts to movie theaters around the world. They are taking advantage of a digital medium and in turn are going to make a great deal of money that will add to their bottom line for generations to come. Granted most ensembles don’t have the legendary reputation of this famous institution, however I think cultivating new ideas to increase non-earned income is really the key to long term survival. I personally would like to see orchestras make money doing non-music related projects. They can create and develop departments to form new businesses and alliances to make more money. Weary foundations that have been burned over and over giving money to arts groups and seeing it squandered, can make their grants initial investments in building up more cash flow possibilities for arts groups. Endowments are really the saving grace and most important and reliable way to enter the future. I will devote time to endowments in its own segment later on in this series. When the costs of total production rise faster than than ticket income plus private charitable donations, what is to be done? This is the question of our generation. The answers lie in new paradigms of thinking, use of 21st century technology, and a fresh entrepreneurial spirit that can lead us in a new direction.
In Vino Veritas! A couple of years ago, I stumbled on an interesting discovery. While surfing the Internet with my friend, we did a Google search for Grillo and wine. I am a wine fan and I was going through a phase of intensely reading and studying about wine. The results of that search were astonishing. Little did I know that there was a Grillo wine. Grillo being my last name, I was startled and completely fascinated.
It was not just a bottle named Grillo, a wine making family or a vineyard. It was the actual name of a grape. The fruit of the vine itself. The Grillo grape is an indigenous grape of Sicily and it goes back thousands of years. Upon further study, I found out that Grillo is one of the essential grapes in the making of Marsala wine. Marsala is the most famous wine in Sicily and in its heyday rivaled the best Port and Sherry of Europe. It is a fortified wine with an alcohol content of 20%. Most people are familiar with this fortified wine from the classic dishes such as Chicken or Veal Marsala. Marsala consists of a combination of three basic grapes. Grillo, Catarratto and Inzolia grapes are blended to make this famous wine. In recent years, vinters are making and refining bottles of 100% Grillo grape. In conjunction with modern technology and a rising Sicilian wine industry, Grillo is starting to shine solo. Just imagine, every dish of Veal Marsala contains some Grillo grape!
Among its importance in making Marsala, the Grillo grape is also used in a wide variety of blends. Blending wines has been a tradition of the Sicilian wine industry for millennia. One of it most famous combinations is Mamertino. There are several different names that are associated with this particular wine. Location is established with the city of origin. For example, you would have Mamertino di Messina or Mamertino di Milazzo. Julius Caesar had a great affinity for the taste of Grillo wine. Julius Caesar preferred the Mamertino which contained the most Grillo. To read an interesting article that discusses Caesar’s Grillo wine preference, click here. Here is an excerpt from www.biovinivasari.it describing the history of this ancient fruit. To visit a blog about the Mamertino wine click here.
“The Grillo grape gives Mamertino white wine its distinctive taste. This is a wine which was recorded as far back as Roman times. There are copious records on Marmetino dating back to 289 BC. Mamertino was planted in the area of Milazzo and the surrounding hills in the neighbourhood of the communes of Santa Lucia del Mela and Meri’. It was described as: ”a praiseworthy grape variety for the production of a praiseworthy wine”. A warm, generous and highly drinkable wine,it was offered to the followers of Julius Ceasar at banquets including the celebrations for his third consulship, and was mentioned in ”The Gallic Wars”. The noble and historic origins of Mamertino, passed down by word of mounth on the land from which it came, indicate a wine which was showered with honors, prized and aristocratic that, furthermore, towered over its contemporaries in ancient and modern times. Strabone, the revered Roman geographer counted the Mamertino among the best wines of the time and Pliny placed it in fourth place in his classification of 195 wines, while the Frenchman Andrè Tehernia, in his book, ” The wine of Roman Italy ” described Mamertino as ” the fourth grand cru classé”.
There has been a resurgence in recent years of bringing back the ancient grape varietals of Sicily. For more information on this revival click here. To learn more about the Sicilian wine industry click here . The painting below is Caravaggio’s “Bacchus”. It dates from around 1593 and hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. For more information on this famous painting click here.
The Princeton Symphony Orchestra is set to finish their season on Sunday April 27th at 4:00. The ensemble will be led by guest conductor Rossen Milanov. David Grielsammer will be the featured piano soloist. The program will include Prokoviev’s Puskin Waltz’s Opus 120, in celebration of the composer’s birthday. Mozart piano concerto #5 in D major is next, followed by the eternal Symphony #5 by Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven’s 5th symphony is the most recognized melodic theme in the entire classical music repertoire. This will surely be an exciting way to end a very interesting season.
This is the second year that I have been playing with the symphony. The Princeton Symphony is a professional orchestra, not to be confused with any of the music groups from the University. It is a very fine ensemble. The 2007-2008 season has been an important transition year for the group. The orchestra is in the midst of a conductor search. What is intriguing for the musicians is that we get a chance to play with several different guest conductors. The first concert of the year the orchestra was lead by Shi-Yeon Sung. She is the new assistant conductor for the Boston Symphony, in addition to winning the top prize at the famed Gustav Mahler conducting competition in Europe. This concert was excellent and was definitely a great way to start the season. Subsequent concerts were lead by Jens Georg Bachmann of the Metropolitan Opera and Mischa Santora. The next concert was quite a treat. Gunther Schuller was the guest conductor and lead us with his own piece Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee. We concluded this program with Paul Hindemith’s Matis der Maler Symphony. Just as we began rehearsing the symphony, Schuller pleasantly commented that he succeeded Hindemith at Yale. This concert was in conjunction with the Princeton University Art Museum. The PSO plays a lot of contemporary music and the new works are very well received.
Princeton, New Jersey is a beautiful town with many cultural offerings. This is a great advantage for the ensemble. One of my first impressions of Princeton was that is an ideal marketplace for the arts. It is a good combination of affluence and intelligentsia. The concerts here in Princeton are very well attended. Next season is also going to be a host of new guest conductors and will be announced publicly in the near future. Once the symphony finds its new leader, the sky is the limit for sure. For more information and history on the Princeton Symphony visit their website by clicking on the following link www.PrincetonSymphony.org.
The Princeton Symphony plays on the campus of Princeton University in Richardson Auditorium. Richardson Auditorium is located in Alexander Hall. The picture below is the interior of this historic building. This concert hall has some of the best acoustics I have ever experienced. It frequently hosts many guest orchestras and it is one of the busiest theaters on the east coast. For more information on this architectural gem click here.
This is a new series I am starting on the blog. “Orchestra Confidential” will focus on symphonic musicians and all things that permeate the backstage of the concert hall. I have always thought that the backstage lives of performing arts groups are an exciting place percolating with many different things. There are always two doors to every event. The public walks through the front doors under the marquis. The artists, musicians, stage crew, and make-up people all walk through the stage door. The public at large is relatively separated from this underworld of frenetic artistic activity. ”Orchestra Confidential” is going to highlight this behind the scenes culture and everything that pertains to the performance aspect of the business. In one my other series “The Art of the Deficit”, the focus is on orchestra managements and the difficult economic realities of running arts organizations.
Having played in over 30 professional orchestras to date, I have seen and experienced a wide range of things that I think are never really talked about to the general public. From the perspective of the audience, an orchestra looks like a relatively normal institution. A stage full of people in elegant formal tails and black dresses, playing this beautiful music and providing an enjoyable evening of entertainment. Little do they know that orchestras are a hotbed of all kinds of activity. Granted that many work environments have their share of issues, the interesting one about an orchestra is that the stage is everyones’ office. There are 80-100 people on stage with each other day after day. In the business world, most people have their own office to retreat too. The scientist has his or her laboratory, the teacher his or her classroom. This is not the case with musicians. I have heard it been said many times that an orchestra player sees his stand partner more than their spouse! There are orchestras that do rotate, which means that they get to switch it up a bit. This environment can lead to quite a soap opera to say the least. I have witnessed and been briefed on many occasions where this has lead to some outrageous activity that will certainly be discussed further in this series. What this really boils down to is that an orchestra is very similar to a dysfunctional family. Members of the ensemble may not like each other, but are forced to deal with one another on a day to day basis.
I want to focus heavily on the psychological states of musicians. Playing in an orchestra is a much more stressful job experience than most people realize. There was a famous study that came out of Northwestern University some years back relating to high stress careers. The study ranked symphonic musicians second after air traffic controllers when it came to high stress vocations. One of the big factors was the margin of error for mistakes. Even though a plane accident is much worse than a trumpet coming in the wrong spot, the mistakes are irrevocable.
To the surprise of the general public, job satisfaction in symphonies is sometimes extremely low. Negativity and resentment run high in many groups. The frustrated musician is nothing new and can almost become obsessed with never achieving the goals they had in their mind when they entered this profession. I will certainly cite the Harvard Business School’s study that stated that orchestra musicians ranked lower than federal prison guards in terms of job satisfaction. Some factors that led to this discovery are the little input musicians have in the organizations, limited job mobility and the fact that most of the orchestra gets paid the same pay scale. The new musician that joins the orchestra gets the same exact wage as the person who has been playing there for 40 years. Musicians have to learn to live with the job they have, if they were lucky enough to get a job in the first place. This will certainly lead to a discussion of the modern audition process. In classical music, someone is hired potentially for life without a face to face interview, a review of personality traits, a mental health evaluation or what the organization can gain from attaining their employment.
I want this to be a collaborative effort. I invite people to contact me and share their experiences good and bad. The new media environment, in addition to the social networking potential of all of this can have a lasting impact on the industry. Younger musicians can have a better sense of what to expect when they enter the professional arena. Orchestra committees can have a platform to present their case perhaps in the middle of a difficult collective bargaining situation. The list goes on and on. Click on the word contact at the top of this website. Fill out the appropriate fields and I will respond as soon as I can.
On the lighter side, musicians can be absolutely fascinating to work with. On the whole they tend to be extremely bright and are always interested in different things. Whether it is someone reading Charles Dickens or obsessively involved in an intriguing hobby, the aesthetic focused mind of the artist is always in motion.
Please stay tuned for further posts on this exciting topic. I look forward to corresponding with my orchestral colleagues and what surfaces from this inquest will surely be fascinating. With many newspapers limiting or even abolishing their arts writers entirely, this will also serve as an important tool for reporting what needs to be out there. Lets start from the top and not finish until we leave no stone unturned. All repeats please.
“Nothing happens until something moves.”Albert Einstein
First came time! This is the second installment in my blog series “The Musical Universe.” The first installment covered pitches emanating from black holes. This second installment will discuss the rhythm of our own Sun. Astronomical scientists have gained some amazing data from the space probe Ulysses. They have been able to prove that sounds coming from deep inside the Sun cause the Earth to vibrate in sympathy. These vibrations affect many terrestrial systems, in addition to influencing the biological clocks of many plant species. Here is a quote from the website of the European Space Agency:
“Scientists from the Ulysses mission have proven that sounds generated deep inside the Sun cause the Earth to shake and vibrate in sympathy. They have found that Earth’s magnetic field, atmosphere and terrestrial systems, all take part in this cosmic sing-along. David Thomson and Louis Lanzerotti, team members of the HISCALE experiment, on board Ulysses, together with colleagues Frank Vernon, Marc Lessard and Lindsay Smith, present evidence that proves that Earth moves to the rhythm of the Sun. They show that distinct, isolated tones, predicted to be generated by pressure and gravity waves in the Sun, are present in a wide variety of terrestrial systems. Using highly sophisticated statistical techniques, Thomson and colleagues have discovered these same, distinct tones emitted by the Sun, in seismic data here on Earth. They have also found that Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere, and even voltages induced on ocean cables, are all taking part in this cosmic sing-along.Although these tones are all around us, it would not be possible for us to hear them, even if we listened very closely. Their pitch is too low for the human ear, typically 100-5000 microHertz (1 microHertz corresponds to 1 vibration every 278 hours). This is more than 12 octaves below the lowest note audible to humans. For comparison, the note to which orchestras tune their instruments (A above Middle C on a piano) corresponds to 440 Hertz”.
Back in 2000, scientists made another interesting discovery related to solar rhythm. They found a solar heartbeat that was connected to a 16 month cycle deep inside the Sun. The scientists believe that this rhythm is related to and influences the 11 year Solar cycle. For more information on the heartbeat of the Sun click here.
Being a musician myself, I rather leave the particulars to the scientists. However, I do think the larger concept here is extremely interesting, especially for people who make music. The Sun is beating like a metronome and the Earth is reacting to it. The celestial dance continues as we fly through the Milky Way. Every time a string player draws a bow or a wind player blows through their instrument, it creates motion and in turn vibration. When musicians gather together and play in ensemble, it is a microcosm of the Universe. Just the word Universe, means one song (uni-verse). How wonderful to think that the music and concerts we play are a small representation of this galactic polyphony. No wonder for thousands of years, human beings have celebrated the Sun in all of its glory, beating drums and singing songs. Perhaps on some level, these rhythms even penetrate our own consciousness.
The San Francisco Symphony led by music director Michael Tilson Thomas will be playing for the first time at the State Theater in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The concert is Thursday March 13 at 8:00. The program will consist of Shostakovich Symphony #9 in E minor and Beethoven’s Symphony #3 “Eroica”. The San Francisco Symphony performs around the world and plays at Carnegie Hall in New York on an annual basis. Take advantage of this opportunity to see this noteworthy ensemble at the State Theater. Michael Tilson Thomas is a world renowned conductor who will surely lead an extremely exciting performance. Do not miss this memorable event. For ticket information on this concert click here.
The State Theater in New Brunswick, New Jersey is an premier venue for the performing arts and entertainment. They present top notch talent across the board in many areas. In addition to this upcoming San Francisco Symphony concert, the theater is also presenting Tony award winning Blast, Carmen with the St. Petersburg Ballet and concerts with the New Jersey Symphony just to name a few. For more information about events at the State Theater, visit their website at www.StateTheatreNJ.org.
For a virtual tour of the State Theater click here.
Here is an interesting video on the young conducting sensation Gustavo Dudamel on 60 Minutes. Maestro Dudamel has been taking the classical music scene by storm in recent years. At only 27 years of age, he been appointed music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic which will effectively start in the 2009-2010 season . Before his appointment in L.A., many American orchestras were going after him including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He is currently Principal Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and is in his ninth year as Music Director of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in Venezuela. He has many debuts in the 2007-2008 season including the Vienna Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic and the Berlin Stattsoper.
Gustavo burst onto the global music scene when he won the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in 2004. Up until then, he was relatively unknown outside of his native Venezuela. He has garnered a great deal of press coverage in the past couple of years. To read an excellent article about him in the New York Times magazine click here. He has also been featured in Time and Newsweek.
It is very exciting to think about the potential and future of this great talent. I think he is filling a void that has been present in the classical music field for some time now. There has been a lull in the quest to find the next great conductor. A handful of orchestras have been going entire seasons without having a music director and even experimenting with having multiple conductors. There is always the case when orchestras have a music director and they collectively don’t like him/her. Given the current state of classical music looking for leaders and vision in the 21st century, Dudamel fits the bill perfectly. He has the charisma and personality that if marketed properly, could make his orchestras a total sensation. He will make classical music concerts extremely exciting. This will be infectious to the public at large. Instead of orchestra concerts being the same mundane thing, he will bring an energy that the audience can feed on. This is what music is all about, stirring emotions and feeling better than when you entered the concert hall. I look forward very much to the day I can play under his baton.
This is the second installment of my new series “The Art of the Deficit”. The focus of this post is to demonstrate how federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts impacts the budgets of professional orchestras. Public funding of the arts in America has a long history of being inadequate and even controversial. Unlike our counterparts in Europe where state funding of the arts is in the billions, artists in the United States are left to fend for themselves. The goal of this series is to dig deep into the reasons why many orchestras are running millions of dollars in the red year after year. When the numbers are crunched and the role of the NEA is investigated, the results are very revealing.
I had the opportunity in 2007 to attend a National Endowment for the Arts grant workshop. The workshop was a basic introduction to the NEA, what their mission is, and how one goes about submitting grants. I didn’t go for any specific project, just out of curiosity for how this agency works and how it relates to the orchestra field. What I learned was a real eye opener in terms of how the agency corresponds to the fixed cost structure of the modern symphony orchestra. After sitting through about three quarters of the presentation I had my fill and left. When I returned home, I pondered about what the real relationship was between our government and its support for the arts.
The biggest revelation of attending this workshop is that the NEA only provides grants on a project by project basis. They made it extremely clear that they do not support the daily operations of any arts group. Every grant proposal was to be in reference to a specific project. I was under the impression that they would give an orchestra funding and that the money would support the general operations of the organization. If this is the way the NEA functions, how does this relate to the bottom line of an orchestra budget?
The question I posed to myself was this. I compared the grant amount that each orchestra received with the size of their annual budget. The numbers were shocking. So small. For example, lets take the Columbus Symphony in Ohio. They are in the middle of a financial crisis right now. Their annual budget is around 12 million dollars and their 2007 grant from the NEA was $15,000. That is barely 1/8 of 1%. This is almost a negligible amount. The ratio is about the same even when you look at the big budget groups. The Los Angeles Philharmonic received the highest grant for an orchestra in 2007 at $100,000. Their budget is around 70 millions dollars. That leaves their percentage at around 1/7 of 1%. Even though something is better than nothing, the numbers and percentages are very telling.
Orchestras also have the opportunity to get government support from state and local agencies. The Columbus Symphony received a grant of $153,082 from the Ohio Arts council in 2007. This works out to be just over 1% of the total budget. Local governments(cities and counties) often have a much more difficult time giving support due to their smaller budgets and lack of resources.
The 2008 fiscal year budget for the NEA is $144.7 million, up $20 million from fiscal year 2007. Even though this slight increase is encouraging, this an extremely small number to support the thousands of artistic companies in the nation. This is to be split among every museum, dance group, library, theater group, orchestra, etc. In comparison to the 3 trillion dollar federal budget, this is a drop in the bucket. It doesn’t even compare to the payroll of the New York Yankees, which is over $200 million.
In conclusion, the lack of government support leaves the American orchestra almost completely dependent on the support of the private sector. Unlike Europe where state arts funding is commonplace, orchestras are financially on their own. Perhaps we are no different than any other business in a market economy. This is a fact of life and we have to learn to live it. The chances of any substantial increase in government funding are slim to non-existent. We need to look at different ways that orchestras can make money and offset their propensity to be millions of dollars in the red on an annual basis.
To read a complete list of NEA grants to orchestras in 2007 click here.
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About John Grillo
John started playing Double Bass at the age of 11. He attended The Julliard School during high school and was a scholarship student at Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana where he studied with Lawrence Hurst. After graduating from IU, he attended the Manhattan School of Music completing his Masters Degree. (more)
