Notes from the Heartland
I'm leaving Sam and my colleagues to finish out their week of Nordic finger-torture; last night I arrived in Ohio to do a concert with the Columbus Symphony featuring the Kingston Trio. (My burning question about Charlie and the MTA; if Charlie's wife could slip him a sandwich, why couldn't she slip him a nickel??)
The Columbus Symphony has been through some mighty trying times over the last year or so, and the musicians seem relieved to be back at work despite the sizable paycut they've agreed to take. A perception-altering fact; with a population of 747,755 (the 15th largest metropolitan area as of 2007), Columbus now supports an orchestra of 53 full-time musicians playing a season reduced from their previous 46 weeks to 38, while Minneapolis, at 377,392 the 46th largest city, supports a 98-member orchestra for a 52-week season. Which always begs the question; what ideal combination of factors - history, corporate sponsorship, board leadership, community pride, charisma of music director - lead to such discrepancies?
Rehearsal went well this morning (it's a good band), and musicians seemed to be in pretty good spirits; I'm sure many readers join me in saying I'm glad your back, Columbus Symphony!
A few other thoughts:
Regional jets + 66 mph gusts (the Columbus airport was purportedly shut down for awhile. I certainly don't think we should have even tried to land) = one of the scariest flights I've ever been on, and you regular blog readers know I fly 40-60 times a year. I've been on bumpy flights before, but...sheesh...
Now, air travel has, admittedly, been pretty miserable the last few years, what with all the mergers and flight cutbacks, and I understand the frustration of missing multiple connections and taking 20 hours to make what should have been a 5 hour trip. However, I remind everyone, if a reservation agent on the phone or the check-in person at a previous airport has messed up your re-(re-re-, depending on how many connections you've missed) booked flight, please do not scream at the gate agent! It's like yelling at Steve Campbell because you didn't enjoy the performance of Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony (N.B., there are no tubas in "Jupiter" - yes, Steve's in the orchestra, but did he contribute to that particular performance? No. Is the gate agent culpable for the inadequacy of some other Northwest Airlines employee a thousand miles away? No.) (I witnessed this scene as I was on a cancelled/rerouted/standby-only flight to Columbus via Milwaukee - the screamer made the gate agent cry!)
Finally, as much as traveling has become an enormous pain (and the part of my job I least enjoy), it allows me (and every traveling musician) to experience life somewhere else, firsthand, which I find immensely important. It's easy enough to become so entrenched in everyday life that we start seeing things from a very singular perspective. Being on the road, meeting people from all over, experiencing daily existence in dozens of cities across the country (and around the world) remind me that there are always half a dozen ways to look at anything, and a million ways to approach the basic truths in life (family/community, art/beauty - you know, the good stuff). It makes every day fresh for me, which I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.
The Columbus Symphony has been through some mighty trying times over the last year or so, and the musicians seem relieved to be back at work despite the sizable paycut they've agreed to take. A perception-altering fact; with a population of 747,755 (the 15th largest metropolitan area as of 2007), Columbus now supports an orchestra of 53 full-time musicians playing a season reduced from their previous 46 weeks to 38, while Minneapolis, at 377,392 the 46th largest city, supports a 98-member orchestra for a 52-week season. Which always begs the question; what ideal combination of factors - history, corporate sponsorship, board leadership, community pride, charisma of music director - lead to such discrepancies?
Rehearsal went well this morning (it's a good band), and musicians seemed to be in pretty good spirits; I'm sure many readers join me in saying I'm glad your back, Columbus Symphony!
A few other thoughts:
Regional jets + 66 mph gusts (the Columbus airport was purportedly shut down for awhile. I certainly don't think we should have even tried to land) = one of the scariest flights I've ever been on, and you regular blog readers know I fly 40-60 times a year. I've been on bumpy flights before, but...sheesh...
Now, air travel has, admittedly, been pretty miserable the last few years, what with all the mergers and flight cutbacks, and I understand the frustration of missing multiple connections and taking 20 hours to make what should have been a 5 hour trip. However, I remind everyone, if a reservation agent on the phone or the check-in person at a previous airport has messed up your re-(re-re-, depending on how many connections you've missed) booked flight, please do not scream at the gate agent! It's like yelling at Steve Campbell because you didn't enjoy the performance of Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony (N.B., there are no tubas in "Jupiter" - yes, Steve's in the orchestra, but did he contribute to that particular performance? No. Is the gate agent culpable for the inadequacy of some other Northwest Airlines employee a thousand miles away? No.) (I witnessed this scene as I was on a cancelled/rerouted/standby-only flight to Columbus via Milwaukee - the screamer made the gate agent cry!)
Finally, as much as traveling has become an enormous pain (and the part of my job I least enjoy), it allows me (and every traveling musician) to experience life somewhere else, firsthand, which I find immensely important. It's easy enough to become so entrenched in everyday life that we start seeing things from a very singular perspective. Being on the road, meeting people from all over, experiencing daily existence in dozens of cities across the country (and around the world) remind me that there are always half a dozen ways to look at anything, and a million ways to approach the basic truths in life (family/community, art/beauty - you know, the good stuff). It makes every day fresh for me, which I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.
Labels: orchestras not named minnesota, random thoughts, the traveling musician
posted by Sarah at
1:21 PM
7 Comments:
That was my Charlie on the MTA question when I was ten. Somewhere around 25 or so, I figured it out. She obviously could have handed him a nickel. But she didn't. So the question becomes, what exactly did he do in the days leading up to his fateful trip 'neath the streets of Boston to make her angry enough not only to deny him the make-up fare, but also to keep him alive with sandwiches and thereby prolong his agony?
They're dark folk, those Kingston Trio guys. Hang down your head, Tom Dooley, indeed...
I apologize in advance for this, but I have some extra time tonight...so some facts:
1. Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area is the 16th largest in terms of population at 3,175,041.
2. Columbus Metropolitan area is the 31st largest at 1,725,570.
3. Land area for the City of Minneapolis is 58.4 sq mi (that's really not very big at all, which is why Minneapolis is so far down the list in terms of large cities)
4. Land area for Columbus is 212.6 sq mi.
5. Population density for the city of Minneapolis: 6,722/sq mi
7. Population density for Columbus: 3,556.1/sq mi
(feel free to vote for me if I ever run for Mayor of Mpls.)
So as you can see, there are simply many, many more people living within the metropolitan communities of the Twin Cities than there are in Columbus. In general it appears that the top orchestra's follow population trends to a large degree. I'm sure a lot of this is simply due to the law of averages...more people, more demand. I would think that the fact that Ohio already has two top-ranked orchestra's in the country, surely doesn't help Columbus's cause.
Other than that, I believe that history plays a very large part in an Orchestra. The Minneapolis Symphony was founded still pretty early in terms of top-orchestra's, and they had great Music Director's from very early on. I think this sort of historical advantage is a large part of why some major orchestra's stay major (come to think of it, sports teams seem to operate the same way in terms of this). Things do change however, and so keeping audiences happy and in-tune to the tradition is a constant battle.
I don't think all is lost in Columbus though by any means. It's still a reasonably large orchestra, and with proper management they can get back on track and add to what they have again (albeit a very bad time for anything to be on track). I lived in San Diego for several years - time that directly coincided with their bankruptcy years of '96-'98. It totally sucked not having a working orchestra in town, but they are back and by most accounts, they are better than they have ever been.
You SHOULD run for mayor of Mpls! My stats from this site: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763098.html
This comment has been removed by the author.
While Spartacus is right that Mpls/St. Paul is a far more populous metro than Columbus, it's still interesting to consider some of the large US metros that lack major orchestras. Phoenix is the #13 metro area by population, and has a small-budget regional orchestra. San Diego, Tampa, Denver, Seattle and Portland are all in the top 25 by population, and none has what objective observers consider to be a major orchestra.
And then there's the baffling story in Miami, which sits at #7 and has no full-time professional orchestra at all. Sarah could tell you some stories about that situation...
No comment!
Sarah, may you NEVER experience landing at MSP during wind shear! I'm normally a calm flier, but the day I landed during wind shear had me and everyone else white-knuckled. The pilot though was amazing. He compensated for the wind by bringing the plane in with one wing down, the other up, then evening it out at the very last moment....(smile) Cinda
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