Random Monday: A Blood Contract, Back to the Future and Interview Updates

Sign this – or else!
In the latest news from the Louisville Orchestra and their contentious labor relations, management has resorted to a strange coercion tactic coated in legal language.

In a nutshell, the letter explains that unless the recipient returns a signed statement that they are willing to “participate in future Louisville Orchestra concerts and rehearsals” the organization will interpret such response as a “voluntary refusal to work.”…Moreover, if the recipient does accept the terms but fails to attend all scheduled services, the organization will also interpret such actions as an “as an abandonment of your employment.”

(More.)

While one would doubt that this tactic will hold water in court, it does add another interesting layer to the bitter story. It seems to indicate that this conflict is far from being over and that the Louisville Orchestra management is digging in for a long fight.

Beyond this, it is worth noting that the musicians of the Louisville Orchestra have managed to keep their web site classy and void of hyperbole and rhetoric – unlike in another recent conflict.

An endangered species list?
At The Horn – a list and some thoughts on recent crises in the American orchestral scene.

Peter Landgren moves to Cincy
Former Baltimore Symphony hornist Peter Landgren has been appointed as the new dean of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, his alma mater.

Oddities from a past future
At Modern Mechanix – a website devoted to old magazine articles that feature “things in the future” – we get a nice picture essay of some odd instruments, including a hunting horn (click to Page 2).

Horns and tattoos
A new tattoo and its design stem from a childhood memory of learning to play the French horn in “Reborn Through Art and Ink.”

The horn was passed from one pair of grubby hands to another round the circle.  Each child attempted, unsuccessfully, to birth sound from the bowels of the nickel-plated beast.

Throw it away to make room
One of my favorite online writers is Seth Godin. His posts are short and sweet and are written in a way that leaves lots of wiggle room for interpolation and cross-application. While his site is mainly geared towards marketing, many of the points he brings up can be applied to any creative activity.

For example, sometimes as musicians we might get stuck in a rut: improvement might be slow, our playing slides into slump, or our creative juices run dry. When that happens it helps to re-evaluate routines and procedures in order to weed out what is working and what is not.

When a not-so-good software tool or a habit or an agency or a policy has too much inertia to be fixed, when it’s unbetterable, you’re better off without it. Eliminating it will create a void, fertile territory for something much better to arrive.

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Random videos

This new video from Marc Papeghin is a virtual soup of Hollywood movies and more importantly I think, great Hollywood composers.

While I certainly would not call Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood good by any means (let’s talk about his HORRIBLE English accent), the score by Michael Kamen is fantastic.

If you missed it, we have an interview with Marc here on Horn Matters that you might want to check out.

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Rob Jones has posted an detailed video on his wooden trumpet construction.

I am fascinated with Rob’s pursuit of a playable wooden trumpet. While I don’t imagine that it will ever compare to a real brass instrument, his intense interest in playability lends a good degree of technical accuracy and artistic merit to his creations.

See this interview with Rob, with a deeper look into his wooden horn piece.

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Here is a rehearsal excerpt of Kenneth Fuch’s new piece for horn and orchestra, Canticle of the Sun. The composition has recently been recorded by Timothy Jones with the London Symphony Orchestra and is available at Amazon.

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While the winter holidays are long away, this video featuring Matthias Berg playing “Let it Snow” is inspiring. My uneducated guess would be that his condition was the result of a Thalidomide birth defect.