Stravinsky and Money

No, these are actually two separate topics, combined into one post. First, Michael Monroe has spent his summer well, creating Mr. Stravinsky's Random Accent Generator. Click through to see what and why (though the later question might well be WHY?!!!!)

Second, another article appeared in today's IndyStar about the Venzago/ISO stir. According to Venzago's manager, the issue was money. The ISO administration wanted Venzago to take a 50% cut in salary for this year, and to go with a podium fee payment system for 2010-11 instead of a standard salary. According to Drew McManus' compensation reports, Mario Venzago made $395,764 last year, with the base musician salary at $72,800. CEO Simon Crookall earned $256,823. I don't know if Simon will take a salary cut this year, I would certainly expect it as a good moral booster. Another part of the newspaper article mentions that the ISO had a budget shortfall of $293,000, and they laid off eight front office staff this year.
Update: I missed the little arrows in Drew's charts which show that Mario had a raise this last year, and Simon did indeed get a salary cut. I don't have a subscription to Drew's site to see how much the cut was. Mario's 2006-7 salary was reported in the newspaper as $388,695, so it looks like he got about $5000 raises each year.