Sunday, December 3, 2006

A Fractured Fairytale

Once upon a time there was a great orchestra. One day, due to a tight economy and orchestra administrators who were mediocre musicians at best and would rather spend orchestra revenues on pet projects that would get them re-elected in the next orchestra administrators election, there came a time when the salaries offered for playing in the orchestra weren’t high enough to attract the kind of musicians needed to maintain the traditionally high quality of the group. When the musicians would complain, the administrators would just tell them things like “if you’re in it for the money you should be doing something else” or “you should be doing it because you love music” and the orchestra started getting worse and worse.

Eventually, even the inept administrators realized that there was a problem with the sound of the orchestra. The problem was that there were a few players in the group who just didn’t have certain talents that are taken for granted in competent professional musicians. And as anyone who knows will tell you, it only takes one or two “tin ears” to make the whole ensemble sour. The conductor tried and tried in vain to find good replacements, but unfortunately all of the really talented people were being scooped up by higher paying orchestras or had gotten out of the orchestra business all together and were doing studio work and such. So finally the administrators came to the orchestra and said, “Since you can’t seem to shape up, we’re going to solve this problem for you.”

So the orchestra administration, as part of their new “Louisiana Orchestra Accountability Program” (LOAP), started using a standardized survey to rate the effectiveness of each performance. Needless to say, the LOAP scores were not good, so the administrators started requiring workshops on things like how to play with good pitch and rhythm. Now to say that these workshops didn’t help would be a gross understatement. Being that things like pitch and rhythm are intuitive aspects of musical talent that should be refined and developed long long before someone gets to be a professional, the competent musicians of the orchestra were bored and impatient at the prospect of being drilled on such basics. As for the less competent players, it was like explaining color to a blind man.

Over and over the musicians tried to tell the administrators that their approach to orchestra improvement was not only counter productive, but was actually part of the growing problem. Unfortunately their response only demonstrated their unwillingness to confront the real issues. They would say things like “What can it possibly hurt for the musicians to review their basics?” or “Aren’t they interested in improving themselves?” Well lo and behold; when the next concert rolled around, the LOAP scores were lower than ever. The administrators stormed into the conductor’s office and demanded an explanation. “Very simple” said the wise old conductor, “We’ve been using too much of our valuable rehearsal time to hold these useless workshops.”

As a result, the administration fired the conductor for having such a negative attitude. But the good news is that even though the new conductor isn’t such a great musician, he’s a real “team player” when it comes to implementing the administration’s accountability program. And since his phone wasn’t exactly ringing off the hook with job offers, he was more than happy to take the low salary that the position paid.

And they all lived happily ever after because as time went on, eventually almost no one even remembered how great the orchestra used to be.

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