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the orchestra world

orchestral inheritance

I read the most recent issue of Senza Sordino (the journal of ICSOM or the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians) at work yesterday, just before our second of two Garrison Keillor concerts (great fun, and absolutely worth the money if he’s coming to an orchestra near you soon – in this case I think the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony are his two other orchestral gigs this fall), and one article really caught my eye. It referred to the three main groups of musicians who make up the symphony orchestra. Not “strings, winds, percussion” or that sort of arrangement, but rather the age groups.

They are (and I’m paraphrasing, as the issue did not make it home with me last night): the newcomers, the middlers, and the veterans.

The author talks about the newbies and the veterans as the technical and historical authorities of the orchestra, but it’s what he said about the largest of the three groups, the middle-agers, that caught my eye.
The middlers (my expression, actually, more accurately is middle-farts) are who the author asserts really own the orchestra. They are between the ages of 30 – 50 (with some outliers), and they have made a committment to being in the group they’re in, and are those who take up most of the workload of committees and other grunt work that keeps the rest of the orchestra relatively happy. I hadn’t really thought of coming into this position of ownership, at least not in this way. It makes a lot of sense, and now I feel a bit daunted by the responsibility. It is this group, into which all of my closest friends in the orchestra fall, which now takes the task of stewardship of the orchestra, and it’s a bit scary! We as a voting bloc and largest group of people who form the pool of service for the orchestra now face an uncertain future: where will the orchestra go from here? How will we keep these phenomenal young talents that win our auditions each year? How can we motivate an already “asked to death” set of donors and audience members to dig a bit deeper and help us get to the next level? How do we stay relevent to a fast-moving and attention span deficient society?

I hope that some answers come to our collective minds in the near-term, and that some great music is made in the meantime. Well, welcome to a new season, one that will be one of our best yet, and enjoy yourself.

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