What’s in Cleveland’s laundry hamper

These must be interesting times in The Cleveland Orchestra, what with a damning article in the local alternative rag on their concertmaster and all. For the seven people in the orchestra business who haven’t yet seen it, the focus of the article is on the alleged behavior of Bill Preucil towards his students at the Cleveland Institute of Music and his alleged role in hiring several of his relatives at the orchestra. As interesting as the article are the comments, which total 229 (and increasing by several each hour) as of this posting. The depiction of the Cleveland Institute of Music in the article and the associated comments is not a very attractive one. One wonders whether the imminent retirement of CIM President David Cerone is related to that picture.

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Off to hear the Wizard

We played pit orchestra for “The Wizard of Oz” (the movie) the other night. What a wonderful score (by Herbert Stothart, a Milwaukee boy). And what a wonderful movie (although we could only hear it and not see it). Great script, great acting, great music. Hard score, though, not made any easier by some weirdnesses in the original editing that make sticking to the soundtrack quite a challenge. Fortunately the conductor, Constantine Kitsopoulos, had done this show several times before and knew all the weirdnesses; all we had to do was to try to keep up.