Editorial Standards

Cadenza is written and edited by a small editorial team of working professional orchestral musicians. Most of us hold full-time positions in some of the top orchestras in the United States. Investigative work is produced collectively; editorial decisions are made by the team as a group, with anyone carrying a direct conflict on a given subject recusing from that piece.

The team writes anonymously. Performers who publicly analyse peer institutions in print carry real occupational exposure — contracts, sub lists, audition invitations, and conductor relationships in the classical-music labor market all run through a small set of decision-makers. The cost of attaching individual names to investigative work about colleagues’ employers is high. The cost of staying anonymous is low: every factual claim in every published piece is sourced inline to public records, so the work stands or falls on the documents themselves, not on the byline.

Guest authors are named individually with full byline credit. Research collaborations with named academics, researchers, or musicians who choose to attribute their work publicly are credited in full at the top of the relevant piece.

Every numerical claim, every direct quote, every named action, and every characterisation of an institution’s behaviour in a Cadenza investigation is sourced inline to public material. The sources we rely on most:

• IRS Form 990 filings (US nonprofit financial disclosures)
• Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch rating actions and reports
• Court records and filings (US federal and state, plus comparable foreign records)
• Board memos and circulars that have entered public circulation
• Published reporting in established outlets, cited and linked
• Annual reports, audited financial statements, and SEC filings where applicable
• Public programming, personnel, and audition data published by the institutions themselves
• Industry data from organisations such as the League of American Orchestras and similar bodies

We do not source from private documents or unverified leaks. We do not publish material that relies on a single anonymous human source without an independently verifiable public record behind it.

Before publication, every Cadenza investigation passes through an internal fact-check pass that verifies, for each claim in the piece:

• The cited source actually contains the claim, exactly as stated.
• Numbers, dates, names, and titles match the source document.
• Quotations are reproduced verbatim and attributed to the correct speaker and context.
• Characterisations of institutional behaviour are supported by the linked record, not by inference.
• Where our reading of a record differs from earlier published reporting, the difference is flagged in the piece.

Pieces involving named individuals are reviewed for fairness — we aim to represent the subject’s own statements or positions where they exist on the public record.

If you believe a factual claim in a Cadenza piece is wrong, please write to hello@cadenza.work with the piece, the claim in question, and the public source that contradicts it.

When we confirm an error, we correct the article and append a timestamped “Correction” note at the foot of the piece that records what was wrong, what it has been changed to, and the date of the correction. We do not silently edit factual claims after publication. We reply by email to the person who flagged the error to confirm what was changed.

Where a piece is substantially rewritten in response to new information after publication, we note the revision and the reason for it. Cosmetic edits, typo fixes, and link maintenance are not flagged.

Investigative pieces produced by the editorial team are credited to “The Cadenza editorial team.” Guest pieces, research collaborations, and contributions from named authors carry full individual bylines.

Any material on Cadenza is free to cite, quote, link to, or reproduce. We do not require permission, and we do not require attribution in any specific form — though linking back to the piece is appreciated so readers can verify the underlying sources themselves.

Cadenza is operated by a Hong Kong-registered company. The platform is funded primarily by subscription revenue from organisations (orchestras, conservatories, festivals, military bands) that pay to list and manage opportunities. Listings and access for individual musicians are free.

Cadenza does not accept advertising on investigative pieces, sponsored placement of editorial content, or paid coverage of named institutions. No subject of an investigation has been or will be a paying customer of Cadenza while their piece is in development or for the year following publication.

For tips, document submissions, correction requests, source verification, and editorial enquiries: hello@cadenza.work.

For organisations claiming or managing their Cadenza profile, please use the in-app contact form at /contact.