Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Worth Reading

Drew McManus was out of town for a while - in Nepal! - and had splendid guest bloggers during his absence. Take a look:

Just to be clear about where I stand on the issue Horowitz raises, I think he is just plain wrong. Orchestral musicians in the top orchestras are paid salaries and benefits commensurate with other professionals in large, expensive metropolitan areas. Compare with software engineers, for example. I think that is right and appropriate, and I wish the musicians in all orchestras were paid decent salaries - one of the maddening things in Drew's annual salary surveys is orchestras where the music directors are paid a small fortune - in the hundreds of thousands of dollars - and the musicians are paid $40,000 if they're lucky. Making all orchestral musicians live like free-lancers - as Horowitz is a free-lance writer - won't improve the quality of musical life in this country.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Fascinating articles by Blair. I'm intrigued by his discussion of the importance of the interior (as opposed to exterior) visuals of the hall, and was stunned (delightedly) by the photos of the result of his design. How daringly retro! How European, even! No wonder that reports have it that it sounds good.