RIP-OFF Ireland has reached the opera house. Wexford Festival is hiring an eastern European orchestra because it says that the local equivalent is 150,000 more expensive.
While the government last week established Culture Ireland, an agency to promote Irish art overseas, one of the countrys premier cultural events is now outsourcing its music to Poland and its singing to Prague.
In a memo last year to the Arts Council, which provides almost 1m funding to Wexford each year, the festival said it wouldnt be using RTEs National Symphony Orchestra because of the cost...

The proposition is that arts marketing should be conceived of as a dedicated field of endeavour so that consumers immersion in the artistic experience occurs even in the case of a difficult art work.

This is an ideal role for someone wishing to gain work experience in arts administration with the UK's leading period instrument orchestras...

The 14th International Conference of the International Artist Managers Association was held from 15 to 17 April in Genoa. Since this event took place in Italy for the first time ever, the conference has been given as main topic The Mediterranean Perspective in Arts management, focusing on arts managers contributions from Greece, Lebanon, and Sicily. In addition, IAMA management offered breakout sessions on Opera dissemination, Corporate Social Responsibility and Audience development. Italian flair succeeds: most of the about 400 delegates used these days on the rainy Mediterranean coast not only for chatting about Arts management but even more for talking business.

This work was carried out by the Research Center for Arts and Culture at Columbia University's Teachers College, under a cooperative agreement between the National Endowment for the Arts and the San Francisco Study Center. The data here represent the answers of Jazz musicians in New Orleans and the aggregated answers of jazz musicians in the 3 study cities. They cover questions regarding income, employment, teaching and mentoring, professional development, professional representation, union membership and personal and professional considerations.

While the Detroit Symphony Orchestra continues to bask in the glow of its new $60-million cultural palace, a sudden surge of red ink revives chilling memories of the bad old days.

The DSO will announce an operating deficit of nearly $2 million on a $28-million budget at its annual meeting of members on Wednesday, according to people with knowledge of the orchestra's finances.

The General Meeting of the European Festivals Association, held in Wroclaw end of October, hosted by the International Festival Wratislavia Cantans, took unanimously the historical decision, after having celebrated the 50th anniversary of the foundation of EFA by a jubilee festival in 2002, to relocate the main office from Coppet (Switzerland) to Ghent/Brussels (Belgium) in 2004.

Can we translate the good news of Chorus Americas chorus impact study into larger audiences for choral music?

by Ellen Rosewall

The Business of Music. 11th IAMA International Conference
Friday 20 - Sunday 22 April, 2001
Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, Germany

The International Artist Managers' Association (IAMA) was proud to be in Leipzig first time to hold the 11th annual international conference entitled "The Business of Music".
Leading artist managers and concert agents from UK, USA, Netherlands, Germany, France and other countries has been talking about the current business of classical music and its future development facing new technologies, less customers and audiences and other important challenges. The delegates has felt inspired from the warm athmosphere to improve the knowledge about the business and refresh friendships with long talks between the sections. The network was there and could building up interesting contacts to raise its services, too.

A way to ascertain trustworthiness and gain new financial backers

A 10-year old non-governmental organisation (NGO) backing young emerging artists from 54 cities in Canada and producer of leading musical events in Montreal on jazz, rock-signing and expressive arts was the first non-profit organisation in North America to get a fiduciary rating.

Faites de la Musique!FDM ("Make Music!") is based in Montreal and was created by Annie Vidal, the founder of the Chic Resto Pop, a chain of restaurant serving homeless and poor people. FDMs key mission is to provide a wider access to culture by helping young emerging talents to take off in the music industry. "Music is what makes a whole generation tick, says Ms Vidal who launched FDM in 1993 during Montreals 300th anniversary celebration. Over 1250 artists so far have participated in one of FDMs leading events: Francouvertes ("French discoveries"), an annual competition attracting 200 young singing talents over a period of four months November through February, Évidemment Jazz ("Jazz, naturally"), an off-beat 2-week event drawing 50 local artists just before Spring, and Espaces émergents, a multicultural event gathering 200

The paper takes a closer look at cultural festivals such as musical or operatic festivals. From an economic viewpoint the paper shows that such festivals offer great artistic and economic opportunities, but that at the same time these opportunities are also easy to destroy.

Jody Doherty, the Pittsburgh Symphony's vice-president of public affairs, is quoted by web-based post-gazette.com as saying that the anticipated deficit of "at least 750,000" cannot be confirmed until "later this month [when] the orchestra closes out its books." One problem is that the symphony's endowment, heavily " invested in the stock market," plummeted in value from $130-million "two years ago" to its present value of less than $100-million. Since the symphony is reportedly limited to withdrawing no more than 6.5 percent out of its endowment each year, the stock market decline has decreased the amount of endowment money that can go towards their "operating budget of $30 million." Another contributing factor to this year's deficit is that this year's ticket sales were $450,000 lower than anticipated.

Last year the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra had a $200,000 deficit, according to the post-gazette.com. At the time the symphony "went through a restructuring in which 10 administrative positions were eliminated." The symphony has not decided on a course of action to "reduce or eliminate the [current] deficit," Doherty reportedly stated.