Worth Reading

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

• Acoustical consultant Christopher Blair's series on building good concert halls, What Makes a Great Concert Hall?, Well-Worn Paths to Failure, and How to Ensure Success.
• Henry Peyrebrune's How Did We Get Here?, which is a superb response to Joseph Horowitz's suggestion that orchestral musicians shouldn't make (or expect to make) a living playing full-time in an orchestra. 

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.)