Got the news almost simultaneously by blog and email (I think that says something about today's digital culture...) - Leonard Slatkin just signed on at IU. Yet another in a long string of high-profile faculty hires, and the article puts it well: "He is one of a number of high-profile artist-teachers to join the IU music faculty in just the last three years. Other notables are pianists André Watts and Arnaldo Cohen, singers Sylvia McNair, Marietta Simpson and Carol Vaness, ballet master Michael Vernon, violinists Mark Kaplan, Jaime Laredo and Alexander Kerr, and cellist Sharon Robinson." Though some of these hires were made beforehand, I suspect some of this is due to the massive 40 million dollar gift we officially got last year.

And then, of course, there's the theory department, which basically got turned down two years in a row by its top choice scholars simply because we don't offer enough money to get someone to move to the middle of Indiana. (Incidentally, to see how much a theorist at IU gets paid, go to this website and run a search for "music theory." Not bad, until you remember that these are top experts in their fields.)