Robert Levine has been burning the midnight oil analyzing the recent Flanagan report [available here] and musing about the best method of determining the future of a given orchestra.  Highly recommended reading.

- Baumol was wrong

- First take on Flanagan, Part I

I love the concept - you can go to the website and either stream the works for free or buy them for between $.99 - $1.79 per work (depending upon length). The recordings are made from live concerts (presumably from three or four of them edited together to cover audience noises, musician mishaps, etc.).

This is something that I wish we could implement here in Oregon. Sadly, the last two seasons have had no broadcast quality archival recordings made - funding was cut to help address the deficit situation in which we currently find ourselves.

I hope that there is some way to restore the $70,000 or so it would take (and I believe that this is a liberal estimate, it may be much lower) to at least have our current excellent concerts at least available for future use for either streaming, downloading, or physical distribution. As it stands right now, the archival recordings which are currently being made do not come close to being of the quality necessary for produce a commercially available recording or broadcast. It’s sad.