Commentary
One of the great problems that we have here in Australia is that within our arts institutions, artistic decisions are increasingly being made not by artists but by administrators.
Take, for example, the symphony orchestra. Where a conductor once largely curated his own artistic affairs, an “artistic planning team” of three to four bureaucrats, sometimes more, now exists. Their responsibilities are enigmatic to even one who works in the industry.
A group of professional musicians can easily programme a season’s worth of symphony orchestra concerts in a couple of hours; I used to simulate such with friends during my undergraduate days….