To study Music is to study the Self ~ Shunryu Suzuki
Posted in Culture, Habits of Mind on Mar 20th, 2012
Two significant cultural items on our relationship to sound have come out recently. Last Sunday the New York Times Magazine had a long piece – Is Silence Going Extinct? – on the disappearance of spaces that are largely free of the touch of human mechanized sound. And the new silent film The Artist won the […]
Posted in Culture on Jun 25th, 2011
The morning after New York has passed Marriage Equality is an occasion sufficiently momentous to depart from my usual topics, so I’d like to try my hand at some social commentary! It’s one thing for Marriage Equality to pass in another state. But when you wake up for the first time as a resident of […]
Posted in Arts Advocacy, Conducting, Culture, Performance on May 8th, 2011
I just wanted to take a quick break from studying Mahler 1 to tell you how jazzed and amazed I am at the energy and excitement around the concert of the Syracuse Symphony Musicians tonight. At rehearsals yesterday the musicians were so thrilled and moved that Hamilton is doing this, words seemed inadequate – what […]
Posted in Arts Advocacy, Culture on Apr 24th, 2011
The crisis experienced in recent months by the Syracuse Symphony is unfortunately reflected in other places – Detroit, where the orchestra took a 23% pay cut after a six-month strike; Honolulu, which just inked an agreement with the musicians for a $30,000 salary (hardly a living wage in Honolulu); Louisville, where the board is pressuring […]
Posted in Arts Advocacy, Culture on Apr 15th, 2011
The musicians of the Syracuse Symphony are vital cultural infrastructure crucial to the cultural vitality of all of Central New York, not only Syracuse itself. I personally find unacceptable the notion that this area cannot support a full time orchestra.