An article in Wednesday’s (12/21) Charleston Gazette-Mail (West Virginia) celebrating Charleston’s “unsung arts heroes,” includes an interview with Shiva Shafii, marketing director of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra. Says Shafii, “I have the fun job of trying to get people as excited as I am about orchestral music. This includes all of the WVSO’s social media, publications, publicity, website updates, e-blasts—pretty much any form of mass communication…. I also book the guest artists that perform with the WVSO, so I get to meet and interact with a lot of really incredible musicians…. The [orchestra’s] announcement of a conductor search was such a complex, challenging process to navigate. It led to my idea of creating the campaign of the search centered around puzzle pieces [with] Emoji Listening guides [giving] audience members a visual roadmap to follow along during the concert, with stories told via characters and emojis of where they are in the piece.… Personally, being one of the 30 participants invited nationwide to attend the League of American Orchestra’s Essentials of Orchestra Management seminar in Los Angeles, and getting to learn from some of the most brilliant orchestra executives this summer, was a major highlight for me.”
Posted December 23, 2016
