As you may know, I was recently profiled as part of a Crosscut article about Portland arts advocates. It was ably written by Portland music writer and musician Stephen Marc Beaudoin. It was an honor to be included, and I was happy with the article as it was published. [Read more →]

Entropy is the Second Law of Thermodynamics (also known as the entropy law). Here’s the jargon:

A measure of the amount of energy in a physical system not available to do work. As a physical system becomes more disordered, and its energy becomes more evenly distributed, that energy becomes less able to do work.

Source: entropy. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Science Dictionary. Retrieved May 18, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/entropy

Entropy is in particular characteristic of a closed system. Orchestras are, arguably, a closed system. They use unique funding mechanisms, have unique ways of hiring and terminating employees, have a language that is “spoken” fluently only after years of high level training (though easily understood with little or no training), and other than concerts have little or no interaction as an ensemble with the outside world. [Read more →]