The Brady Effect!……

I saw Wayne Brady’s (of Who’s Line is it Anyway fame) show in Vegas this past May.  He is one of the most talented people on the planet!  What was most impactful to me was the pre-show, a video of Wayne explaining the audience rules for the show.  It was hilarious, involving tranquilizer darts and karate moves, very creative and completely disarming.  I challenged my class to look for examples online of organization’s audience etiquette policies…discussion below:

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Drum Roll please………

Just  a quick post to announce that the full podcast of my class Audience Connection is up and you can link to it here, or via the Audience Connection tab on the lower left.  It is a left click listen or right click download at this point and 13 classes are up there right now.  I will keep posting highlights in future posts and will note whenever a new class goes up (No. 14 later today).  The first two classes are a little low in volume, it improves from class 3, and … Continue Reading

Apathetique – The class challenges me!

On Wednesday we discussed the strikes at Shreveport and Wisconsin. My students read the articles and my post and it seems that there is a divide amongst them. There is nothing like lively debate especially amongst future arts administrators who might have to deal with big issues in difficult time such as these! The clips are below….

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Apathetique……

Having read about the strike actions with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and the Shreveport Symphony, right and wrong is not the issue that concerns me right now, apathy and irrelevance might be the battle both organizations face in a time when momentous events are taking place….hey what’s the chance someone will bring up the Arts in a debate? I would say zero, and that neither surprises me or even bothers me….what to do in this case?…..

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Arts Funding – Why?…..

In Audience Connection on Wednesday the big question of the week was:

How can you argue for Arts funding in front of someone that might be more interested in Health, Poverty or Education issues?

Big questions need big answers, but when you have 5 minutes in front of a donor to make the case, they can’t be long answers.  I liked what Amanda said, the clip is below……

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Critical mASSacre

In last Sunday’s Deseret News the music critic Edward Reichel, delivered a stinging attack.  Now, he accuses Keith Lockhart of only being able to see the “obvious”.  On the surface his review is “obviously” about Keith, however I read the review completely differently.  It wasn’t really about Keith at all…..

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First request – keep them coming!…

David Preiser wrote this comment on my post Response to Bill – part 2:

In the interests of bringing new audiences to the concert hall, what other types of music might entice them outside of Classical works played in films? Original film music is one obvious answer, but how many orchestras try film scores from the more modern, non-James Horner/John Williams world? The same goes for music from video games (not cutesy Nintendo fluff, but more like Halo or Metal Gear Solid, or similar genres). That music often shares more in common (in terms of instrumental sounds and musical language) with contemporary Classical music, and not even with works by those considered to be the “important” composers of our era.

We broadened it out a little, the 2 clips in response are below….

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