[CAUT] cutting departments

[Paul T Williams]

Ours is expanding rapidly as well.  We did, 2 years ago eliminate one 
position in SOM;  instrument technician, which scared me to death!! it's 
outsourced to a local dealer and seems to be working well.  They also 
eliminated the house manager for the main- School of Music Recital Hall, 
Kimball Hall, which shocked everybody after her 17 years of service; the 
job duties were dived up amongst our SOM general manager, and several 
GTA's to control the set up and tear down of the stage. This also made me 
very nervous on my position.
 
The communication to get things where they need to be at the right time is 
still a challenge, but is getting better.  For instance, I moved the 
harpsichord, by my self this morning from our music building to Kimball to 
find that the previous evening's set up was still on stage, and the 
Steinway D that was supposed to be there for that day's rehearsal tuning 
first thing in the morning was not there..  It, of course, wasn't there, 
but I at least had time to tune the harpsichord.  This sort of thing has 
happened many times, where it never happened before. I had no time to tune 
for 3 faculty recitals last year due to this stuff. (I'm still batting 95% 
of getting everything ready, so....not bad)

Our former instrument tech is doing better independantly now than he did 
here!  Just no benefits.  So it's probably a wash, but at least he didn't 
lose his home, Harley, or new car he bought just before the hammer came 
down!  (Too far extended, I thought even at the time) 

The former stage manager, however, is having a hell of a time getting 
something going.  I wish her luck!

Above all, our School of Music has been growing in leaps and bounds since 
I started here in 2006.  We just added a new Digital Arts Professor 
position, reconstructed several areas to expand this venture, and did a 
lot of reconfiguring spaces to make this happen;  And, the Jazz Dept has 
really made some great strides in expanding, which I really like! You 
should hear our new bass professor, Jeffry Eckles, from North Texas: 
Outstanding!!!  It's been a great success so far. I'm busier than ever, so 
I guess that's a good thing! (no raises for two years now.....)

Paul










From:
Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu>
To:
caut at ptg.org
Date:
10/12/2010 01:40 PM
Subject:
Re: [CAUT] cutting departments



On Oct 12, 2010, at 8:07 AM, Laurence Libin wrote:

> The linked article and comments have important implications for 
> techs. Be prepared!
> Laurence
>
                 Here at UNM it seems like the liberal arts and humanities 
may be 
stagnating or shrinking, but the performing arts, especially music and 
film, are expanding rapidly. Studio art as well.
                 What worries me is the collapse of the dealer networks 
and retail 
market. When I started in the business 30 years ago, Albuquerque had 
several full size dealers: Steinway/Wurlitzer, Baldwin (two stores), 
Kimball (two stores), Yamaha, plus smaller concerns selling Young 
Chang, Everett, Lowrey/Story & Clark (shopping mall), not counting 
some folks selling used instruments. All were locally owned and 
reasonably prosperous. Today, the latest Steinway dealer is going out 
of business, and once it is gone we will be left with a fairly new 
store selling Yamaha, Schimmel and generally top end grands, a mall 
store selling Chinese product, and a small concern selling digitals 
and stocking one or two Kawai acoustics. Period. No used, no nothing 
else. In those 30 years, Albuquerque metro has at least tripled in 
population. That is downright sobering.

Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
http://www.createculture.org/profile/FredSturm
http://www.youtube.com/fredsturm
http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/FredSturm






-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20101012/0000af30/attachment.htm>