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>
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