The Shreveport Symphony is in financial trouble – again.
The orchestra’s deficit is up to $500,000. After reviewing reports from two consultants, the board recently announced its decision to eliminate all full-time musician positions, and to revert to a wholly “per-service” orchestra. Predictably, the distraught musicians are fighting back.
We have seen this scenario before – several [...]

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Last night on PBS we had a mishmash of a program called Berlin in Lights. In fact, we saw highlights from the recent Berlin in Lights festival at Carnegie Hall that gave no sense of what the festival was all about.
The major work was Mahler’s Ninth Symphony conducted by Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic. Rattle is without a [...]

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New Year’s Eve 2007,  I settled in for the annual Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Concert. It was disappointing. Or perhaps I am just tired of this tradition. No effort is made to vary it from year to year, at least as it is produced for North American audiences. Walter Cronkite is the host and at 91 [...]

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