A League of their own
By Matthew Heil
Public Relations Manager
It may surprise you to know that orchestras have their own professional organization, The American Symphony Orchestra League. ASOL, as it's known, is the national group that provides all manner of support and services for 900 member orchestras across the country.
This week, as a matter of fact, ASOL is holding its national conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Several members of The Phoenix Symphony are there, meeting with potential guest artists and
conducters, management, educational organizations and others to improve the work we do, and get a head start on planning upcoming seasons. It's also a chance for places like Nashville to showcase the kind of arts community it supports--surprising, perhaps, in its diversity. As ASOL president and C. E. O. Henry Fogel noted in the conference news release: "[T]he choice of Nashville as our host city might be a bit of a surprise – after all, this is the home of country music. But in fact, Nashville is a model of how a vibrant cultural life can turn a city into a desirable place to live and work. The recent opening of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center has sparked the redevelopment of its downtown neighborhood, demonstrating how the activities of an orchestra are considered vital to its community." The picture is of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, a wonderful building that you can see more photographs of at www.nashvillesymphony.org.
Those kinds of lessons, up close, are part of what the conference provides. In addition to these educational activities, the League lobbies on behalf of arts organizations for increased arts funding, and helps lobby the cause of musicians in Washington D.C., as when they recently advocated for an exception to travel with the rare pernambuco wood (favorite of wood poachers, and of string instrument makers of previous centuries). To keep from turning touring musicians into criminals transporting a protected class of wood, the U.S. government provided a legal exception.
You never know when music might crop up in a discussion--even of unusual plant life!
Public Relations Manager
It may surprise you to know that orchestras have their own professional organization, The American Symphony Orchestra League. ASOL, as it's known, is the national group that provides all manner of support and services for 900 member orchestras across the country.
This week, as a matter of fact, ASOL is holding its national conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Several members of The Phoenix Symphony are there, meeting with potential guest artists and
conducters, management, educational organizations and others to improve the work we do, and get a head start on planning upcoming seasons. It's also a chance for places like Nashville to showcase the kind of arts community it supports--surprising, perhaps, in its diversity. As ASOL president and C. E. O. Henry Fogel noted in the conference news release: "[T]he choice of Nashville as our host city might be a bit of a surprise – after all, this is the home of country music. But in fact, Nashville is a model of how a vibrant cultural life can turn a city into a desirable place to live and work. The recent opening of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center has sparked the redevelopment of its downtown neighborhood, demonstrating how the activities of an orchestra are considered vital to its community." The picture is of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, a wonderful building that you can see more photographs of at www.nashvillesymphony.org.Those kinds of lessons, up close, are part of what the conference provides. In addition to these educational activities, the League lobbies on behalf of arts organizations for increased arts funding, and helps lobby the cause of musicians in Washington D.C., as when they recently advocated for an exception to travel with the rare pernambuco wood (favorite of wood poachers, and of string instrument makers of previous centuries). To keep from turning touring musicians into criminals transporting a protected class of wood, the U.S. government provided a legal exception.
You never know when music might crop up in a discussion--even of unusual plant life!
1 Comments:
i did not know this
thank you for this sort of post; I enjoy the education elements of the blog!
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