Talk:League of American Orchestras

Seeking your assistance to improve article
Hello CWBoast and Kapibara100. I work for the League of American Orchestras. Thank you for improving the article. We are concerned about the banners questioning the League’s notability and the article’s lack of citations to support the information. Additionally, the article contains information that is out of date, and may need to be restructured to conform to the ideal article structure.

I am in the process of doing research to gather more credible media articles about the League, and would like to share them with you when ready. I can also offer updated information about the League. If I post the information here, would either of you be willing to add it to the article? Since I am clearly in a COI position as an employee of the League, I would greatly appreciate any help you can offer to make the article conform to Wikipedia’s standards. Thanks again for your work so far on the article. RachelleNYC (talk) 20:51, 10 July 2019 (UTC)


 * (Sorry to be slow to respond.) Yes, I would be glad to cooperate in improving this article. I have no time to do anything substantial right now (part of the reason for my slowness to respond) but I see a possible minor change. There is a recent constructive edit by User:DadaNeem which is related to a magazine titled (it would appear based on the League's website) "Symphony". This magazine is listed twice in the article as "Symphony Magazine" and, unless you indicate that it should indeed be referred to as "Symphony Magazine", I will simply change that to "Symphony".CWBoast (talk) 19:17, 15 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you CWBoast. That’s great. You’re correct—the magazine is called Symphony. At the League we refer to it as “Symphony (initial cap, italic) magazine (lower case, not italic)” in every first reference since it’s not apparent that it’s a magazine and then just as Symphony (initial cap, italic) for all additional references in a document. I am out of the office until early September and will be back in touch then. RachelleNYC (talk) 21:18, 16 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Hello CWBoast. Your email reached me (thank you!) and I responded, plus sent an article draft in a separate email for you to look over. Please let me know if you received the two emails, or I can post the draft here on the talk page. The media sources are not all formatted for Wikipedia yet, though. Thank you again for reaching out to me! RachelleNYC (talk)

Reference ideas
This New York Times article from 1951 shows the League gathering orchestras to advocate for an exemption for orchestras for a federal tax RachelleNYC (talk) 23:19, 24 September 2019 (UTC):



This New York Times article from 2018 proves that the League has 700 member orchestras, not the currently referenced 800 RachelleNYC (talk) 23:34, 24 September 2019 (UTC):



As a descriptor of the organization, I would suggest wording in the lines of: The League of American Orchestras, formerly the American Symphony Orchestra League, is a North American service organization with 700 member orchestras of all budget sizes and types as well as other individual and institutional members.


 * CWBoast, thank you for your updates. They look great - I see no errors.RachelleNYC (talk) 15:05, 3 October 2019 (UTC)


 * CWBoast, for the Awards section, instead of using the current refs (14 and 15), which are League of American Orchestras refs so there's a conflict, would you consider using one of these?

https://theviolinchannel.com/composer-joan-tower-gold-baton-recipient-league-of-american-orchestras-2019/

or

https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20170317/ann-hobson-pilot-plays-out-ground-breaking-career — Preceding unsigned comment added by RachelleNYC (talk • contribs) 18:42, 17 October 2019 (UTC)


 * CWBoast Let me know if you prefer one (or both) of the above refs and I can format them. You might also want to add the 2019 winner to the page (Joan Tower, as outlined in the Violin Channel ref above) while you're working on that section. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by RachelleNYC (talk • contribs) 18:49, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

CWBoast I love what you did with the Awards section. Thanks so much. I think these edits really shows the diversity of the awardees and it's great to have some third-party refs. The characterizations of the awardees look great. I think the hyphen (most-recent) is correct?? RachelleNYC (talk) 17:25, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

CWBoast Per my suggested edits to the Governance section (see next section), here are a few refs: https://www.americanorchestras.org/about-the-league/board-of-directors.html - This shows the 2018-19 officers. We are about to announce the 2019-20 officers - should be publicly released within the next week or so. Our CEO's bio is found here: https://www.americanorchestras.org/about-the-league/president-and-ceo.html but if you want to supplement with a third-party ref here are a few ideas: https://blog.westaf.org/2012/08/2012-fifty-most-powerful-and.html (Barry's Blog - 50 most powerful) or https://www.musicalamerica.com/news/newsstory.cfm?archived=0&storyid=30839&categoryid=7 (Musical America's movers and shakers); there are also a ton of articles like this one, where he is interviewed about the state of the orchestra field: https://www.nashvillepublicradio.org/post/league-american-orchestras-ceo-discusses-challenges-and-opportunities-facing-field#stream/0 (Nashville Public Radio feature in advance of our last National Conference). RachelleNYC (talk) 22:29, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Also, I'm not sure if I already showed you this, but here is a complete list of many third-party refs: https://americanorchestras.org/news-publications/the-league-in-the-news.html RachelleNYC (talk) 22:34, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

I wanted to add two more refs that could be an additional sentence in a potential sub-section about our CEO. I think it's important to note that he is retiring in 2020. Here is one ref: https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwclassical/article/President-And-CEO-Jesse-Rosen-To-Retire-From-League-In-September-2020-20190604 or another possibility is this (but it has a paywall): https://www.musicalamerica.com/news/newsstory.cfm?storyID=42912&categoryID=2 RachelleNYC (talk) 18:06, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Discussion about specific article edits, deletions, changes
I was wondering about the possibility of deleting or moving the 2nd sentence: "Each year, the League presents the Gold Baton Award and the Helen M. Thompson Award." First, the League does not present the Helen M. Thompson Award anymore. Also, the League does so much more than just presenting awards - to me, if feels like these don't belong right in the first paragraph. RachelleNYC (talk) 23:52, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Hello CWBoast. RE the Awards section: The League does not present a Helen M. Thompson Award anymore; we only present the Gold Baton. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RachelleNYC (talk • contribs) 18:33, 17 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, I see. I'll removed mention of the Thompson award, and use the associated reference to support current and future material in the History section. CWBoast (talk) 18:53, 17 October 2019 (UTC)RachelleNYC (talk) 19:06, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

RE the Publications section. I just typed this up but it didn't save for some reason - forgive me if it appears twice! I would suggest completely eliminating the Publications section and moving Symphony magazine to the Activities section for two reasons: 1) the communications cannot be backed up by proper third-party refs - they're all internal League communications. and 2) they change a lot. Board Notes is now called Orchestra Boardroom; Technology News of Notes is now the Digital Media Digest; Upbeat has not been published since 2014; and we've added the League Leading newsletter (plus we publish Advocacy Alerts). I would delete this section.RachelleNYC (talk) 19:16, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

CWBoast: in reference to the Youth and Education section: Yes, the League does have very strong activities in this area, but I do think it could be edited and moved to the Activities section. I think ref 9 could be put into a separate "Innovation and Community Engagement" section in Activities rather than where it currently lives. The sentences about the Upbeat newsletter should be deleted - Upbeat is no longer published. I think the ref 10 should be completely removed - it's just two examples of successes from the 2013 issue. Ref 11 is very old, as you pointed out. I'm fine with taking it out for now and replacing it with something newer. There are several third-party refs about specific grants for in-school and after-school activities, innovative programming, etc., but they're all about individual orchestras. It's difficult to find one ref that sums up all the work in this area.RachelleNYC (talk) 19:34, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello CWBoast:. I wanted to discuss the Governance section. This is a very problematic section since the names on the League Board have changed yearly, so it's very out of date. I would suggest the following: delete the "Board of Directors" and "Youth Orchestra Division directors" sub-sections since they change so frequently (and the ones currently on the page are old and incorrect); and only include the five most current executive officers "Officers (2019-20)" (they would have to be updated) followed by a new sub-section called "Executive" (which would have the name of our President and CEO). I will give suggested references in the "Talk" page section above. RachelleNYC (talk) 22:04, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

New League CEO announced
Hello volunteers. For anyone following, I wanted to let you know that we announced our new CEO today. Simon Woods will begin work in September. If anyone is willing to do an update on the page, you can find a New York Times article on the new hire here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/arts/music/simon-woods-league-orchestras.html Thank you! RachelleNYC (talk) 21:35, 3 April 2020 (UTC)