Posts about Leadership
On August 8th
covering Business, Creativity, Culture, Leadership, Teams
Y Combinator is a Venture Capital group led by Paul Graham. It’s named after a mathematical function that I can’t come close to understanding. Something to do with recursion, I gather, probably an inside joke for LISP programmers. They provide seed money for tech startups — small amounts that allows them to do the initial work that will attract larger funding.
More importantly, they ask their sponsored groups move to Cambridge or the Bay Area for an intense 3-month sprint (they don’t like calling it a boot camp) where they receive lots of mentoring and work like their very lives depend on it. Read more »
On May 29th
covering Leadership, Music, Music Ensembles
Even though orchestras are bigger and more complex organisms than chamber groups or bands, the same questions of ownership apply. Orchestras have formal boards of directors and union contracts, which are supposed to represent the interests of the larger community and the musicians, respectively. This can bring the issues to light in ways that in rock bands tens to be vague.
These questions are all over the place in the debacle taking place in Columbus, Ohio. The Columbus symphony is within a couple of days of closing down altogether. Drew McManus has been covering these sad developments in his blog, which is always instructive and entertaining. I recommend reading all of the posts with “Columbus” in the title for a case study of how music groups can be torn apart. Here is a letter from the orchestra musicians in Cleveland and Cincinnati to the board and management of the Columbus Symphony. It’s a good read. notice how much of the letter makes the point that the whole community hs a stake inthe orchestra.
On May 27th
covering Leadership, Music Ensembles
This comes from some recent conversations I’ve had with musicians. The notion of “who owns this?” for bands and chamber groups can be complex. Even with a well-worked-out band agreement it can be complicated. When a music group is young, lots of people support the band from lending a couch to crash on to running the merch table to contributing money and in-kind goods and services. The fans contribute to the band by telling their friends and by … well, being fans. In both the classical world and the pop/rock/etc world, managers invest time on the hope there will be revenues in the future. Read more »
On May 25th
covering Leadership, Music Ensembles
Here’s an article of mine in the February Atlas Plugged.
How To Work With A Prima Donna
Michael Jolkovski, PhD
“Prima Donna” (Italian for Leading lady) and Diva are terms originally used to describe the temperamental and demanding tendencies of Opera stars, the rock stars of the 18th through the early 20th centuries. The music may have changed but these demanding tendencies flourish in every medium and genre.
In my practice, I spend a lot of time with my musician clients discussing the problems of working with Prima Donnas — as well as trying to moderate their own career-killing Prima Donna tendencies Read more »
On December 8th
covering Leadership, Music, Music Ensembles
Michael Hovanian, the orchestral bassist & blogger, has a piece on all of the implications of moving the Bassi from one side of the stage to the other. Those of you in small groups will be surprised, and those of you who live in orchestras will want to join the conversation.
I’ve started to privately think of music groups as “simple groups’ and “complex groups”. Simple groups have no hierarchy — they just all meet together and get things done (or not). An orchestra epitomizes a complex group. There are groups nested within groups. There are sections with their own personality and leaders and each stand (pair of players sharing a music stand) is a micro-section with its own etiquette of who turns the page, etc. In my clinical practice I have heard many stories of how stand partners annoy one another to the point of bloodshed over how and when the page is turned. Read more »
