While I'm busy cataloguing new CDs for music director Steve Hahn to add to the November schedule, I'll just take a moment to return opera singer turned opera marketer Rich Russell to the blogroll. I keep forgetting to put him back where he belongs, now that he's long sinced returned to the blogosphere. Rich posts under the title High and Low Notes. Happy reading.
Part of an occasional series in which I whine about sloppy journalism …
This article tells us that 100 people showed up to support a school superintendent who seems in danger of losing his job eight months before he retires. It also tells us that three school board members who apparently want him out didn’t bother to attend the meeting, thus denying the occasion of a quorum. But absolutely nowhere in the story does the reporter explain why three out of the five board members want to fire the superintendent. What do they think he has done, or failed to do? That’s the real story here, which would require some research and interviewing to deliver, but all we get is a quick eyewitness report of somebody who showed up to a non-meeting.
Jan Crews, a former Tucson Symphony Orchestra employee, noticed my post about the orchestra’s low ranking in Drew McManus’ annual survey of orchestra Web sites. (Go here and scroll down for a list of several more detailed articles by Drew on the survey.) Jan has some enlightening comments about the TSO site, which I post here with her permission.
I was the Webmaster of that site from September of 2004 until some time after I left the TSO at the end of January 2006. I am still being asked to update pages.
When I took the site over, it was being managed by the California-based son of one of the trustees. He was very unresponsive to the needs of the TSO. The TSO marketing manager had to send repeated requests to get any information changed or updated. As we began the 2004/2005 season, no current concert schedule information was posted. The design that was handed down to me contained many errors, but my work schedule didn't permit me to redesign the site. I simply had to work around the errors until such time as funds could be found in the TSO budget for a site redesign. All interested parties on the administrative staff knew a redesign was necessary; it just wasn't a high priority because of budget constraints.
Addressing one of Drew’s criticisms, online subscription purchase is simply not feasible given the way TSO subscriptions have to be "built" through TicketMaster. The box office workload would be greatly eased if online purchase of subscriptions could be implemented, but patrons would not be able to keep their seat locations—something that's very important to a great number of subscribers.
I balanced my Web duties with my database administrator duties (of a large, unwieldy, poorly designed Access database that contained all donation and ticket-buying information for the previous ten+ years) and first-line help desk responsibilities for the staff of 20. There was never a period of time when I could completely focus on any one of my tasks. But what I did during that period of time was keep all the information current, including adding program notes, links to concert previews and reviews, and all press releases.
During this almost two-year period, Drew did not once e-mail me directly to make a suggestion. Nor did he display the courtesy of sending his reviews to me as the webmaster, although my name was prominently displayed on the home page and the contact page. (As an aside, I was reviewing the information Drew posted. He stated contact information was not available. On the contrary, the full administrative staff listing, including e-mail addresses, is two clicks away from the home page: About TSO > Administrative Staff.)
But more importantly, I don't believe Drew takes into account the financial restrictions of the organizations on which he is heaping his negative critiques. As you know, the TSO is severely limited by finances. I was not the only person on that staff who was overworked. Every person on the staff works very long hours for low pay, even by Tucson standards. I routinely worked 50- and 60-hour weeks during the performance season. And the management of the TSO is such that it takes a very long time to get a decision out of senior staff (as the director-level is called). There's no money to increase a staff member's education or skill set. There's no money to hire someone with superb Web design skills. I believe senior staff recognizes that a Web site that is populated with current information and easily navigable can be a great marketing tool. However, in an organization the size of TSO, there are far more important matters that must be dealt with. The administrative staff works hard to bring fabulous musical performances and music education to Southern Arizona. That's what's important!
Over the summer of 2006, Sue DeBenedette (director of marketing & PR) contracted with Tom Hill (DigiVideo Productions) to create a new, sleek, easy-to-maintain Web site. I met Tom two months ago through my volunteer work with Tucson Chamber Artists, and he showed me the new site. It's great—it's ready to go. But he can't get TSO senior staff to sign off on it and take over. Their work load is simply too heavy.
But back to Drew's low ratings of the TSO Web site. If Drew really had a heart for the arts, he would give a little more consideration to the underlying facts about Web sites for smaller (Tier 3 and below) orchestras and make available to them more bits-and-bytes information about how to improve their sites, rather than just the heavy-handed critiques with the implied suggestion that he be hired to fix the problems.
The TSO administrative staff is doing the best they can do given the size of this town and the make-up of the financial base of this town. Unless they can increase the donor base and increase the number of subscriptions and single tickets sold, they will continue to have problems. (My daughter-in-law makes more per hour demonstrating products at Costco than I made at the TSO as patron services manager and then as information systems manager.) I personally do not believe that improving the Web site to meet Drew's criteria would make that big a difference in the amount of money that walks through the doors of the Symphony Center. In a larger city with a higher salary base and a younger audience demographic, maybe so. In Tucson, I don't think so.
Three theatrical items from me in the latest Tucson Weekly. First, there’s an introduction to a group that’s trying to move itself out of Phoenix and into Tucson:
Joe Marshall's back in town, and he's looking for company. Specifically, he's looking for an audience for The Alternative Theatre Company, which he's transplanting from Phoenix. He's also looking for enough appropriate actors to support a full season of gay and lesbian theater.Next comes a review of a farce at Live Theatre Workshop:
Caught in the Net is officially a sequel to Run for Your Wife, but sometimes, it seems more like a remake. Once again, John scurries from one apartment to the other, trying to keep his households apart. Once again, it's the reluctant Stanley who must come up with one brilliant lie after another to protect John. Once again, there's some confusion about sexual identity. (This time, nobody in the play is actually gay, but Cooney does manage to get laughs out of suspicions of ephebophilia; no, this production was not underwritten by Mark Foley.)And finally, an evaluation of a fine effort by Sacred Chicken Productions, in which I begin to change my mind about the script:
When I first saw Eric Overmyer's On the Verge two decades ago at Arizona Theatre Company, I hated it. The allegory about the evolution of women's roles from the 19th century to the 20th seemed pretentious in its language, arbitrary in its use of absurdity, and clumsy in its exposition and development of the three main characters.
After a while, the only images that remained clear in my mind were poor Wendy Lehr whirring an eggbeater and indulging in vacant-eyed, Tourette-like blurtings of the word "manioc." I sincerely hoped that Overmyer wasn't planning to give up his day job writing for St. Elsewhere.
On the Verge seemed like a substantially better play last weekend in the version by Sacred Chicken Productions, a company that shows itself only at widely spaced intervals, when actress Carrie Hill and her friends find a script they adore that nobody else is doing locally. I still can't quite understand why the Sacred Chicken folks, the always smart director Sabian Trout and theater companies across the country love this play so extravagantly, but thanks to this new production, I'm beginning to figure it out.
I’m a bit slow catching up on this, but last week oboist-blogger Patricia Mitchell pondered, as she does from time to time, what she should do when a music critic doesn’t get it—particularly when a critic makes a factual error, like crediting her for an orchestral solo she didn’t perform. Says Patty, “I never correct reviewers when they make these mistakes. Having this blog is, I suspect, enough to alienate some who write reviews, and I realize that I may never get a mention because this site here might be off-putting to some people. Correcting a reviewer is just not something I'll ever do ... would a reviewer only comment on me unfavorably if I did that?”
Well, there are maladjusted, vindictive jerks in every profession, and I’m sure a few music critics answer to that description, but not many. I’m not familiar with the personalities of the critics in Patty’s vicinity, but I think she should try “talking back” to them.
In the first place, over the years she’s made a point of not badmouthing people or seeming like a general malcontent. (The only person she openly criticizes is herself.) So no reasonable person is going to think she’s on the attack if she offers a reasonable response to something she’s read.
As a critic myself, I encourage artists to respond to what I write. First, critics who make factual mistakes, no matter whose fault they may be, need to be politely corrected. Any responsible critic wants the record to be set straight. In Patty’s case, she might send a letter to the newspaper’s editor saying, “I appreciate Virgil Thomson Jr.’s positive review of our orchestra’s performance last week, but he shouldn’t have praised me for the oboe solos. Those were actually played by my substitute, Arundo Reed, who was not credited in the program.” Simple, polite, correcting an error without pointing fingers (except maybe at whoever left the sub’s name out of the program, which may have been printed before the substitute was called in).
Now, arguing with a critic about subjective matters is something else, and probably a futile pursuit. Judging a performance involves one’s personal taste and experience, and putting that judgment into words that accurately convey the critic’s impression. Lots of variables there, and nobody’s going to win an argument about aesthetics. It might be interesting, though, to blog about why a performance turned out the way it did—not to make excuses, just to let people in on elements that affected the concert. Was the conductor especially inspring, or hard to follow? Were there problems with the parts that complicated things? Was the music unusually hard, or so easy and overfamiliar that one was tempted to play on autopilot? Most importantly, if the critic complained about, for instance, shrillness in the Rossini overture or wrong notes in the Beethoven symphony, was that because the performance followed a new edition with prominent piccolos in the Rossini or odd variants in the Beethoven? All these things are worth blogging about, and no reasonable critic should think such musings constitute a personal attack … assuming the critic ever reads the blog.
I assumed there'd be no local coverage of the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music's presentation Wednesday night of the Takács Quartet. But, surprise, here's notice from the Arizona Daily Star. (The accent is even going in the right direction!) It would be nice if chamber music, and I don't just mean our own concerts, were reviewed more often around here; more people might come to understand that it ain't just for snooty specialists.
James Reel's cranky consideration of the fine arts and public radio in Tucson and beyond.
