Ask An Expert: The Money Shot
It's been a while since we answered an Ask The Expert question around these parts (remember, if you have a question about anything music or orchestra-related, you can click the Ask An Expert button to submit it, and we'll do our best to find someone who knows the answer,) but Mike is about to more than make up for lost time, with a record batch of five related questions:
Q: How do financial matters impact the particulars of performances at Orchestra Hall? Do performances change based on attendance, interest, funding? Do finances have a role in deciding what/how performances are given? ([For instance,] we originally thought the smaller size of the orchestra at the Mendelssohn concert was due to economic conditions.) How are the musicians paid? Do they typically have other jobs?
That's a lot to answer in one shot, and they're all excellent questions, so I think the best thing to do is to break this up into two separate blog posts. I'm qualified to answer Mike's last two questions, so I'll do that here, and then we'll have someone involved in the orchestra's programming process answer the rest in a later post.
Musicians in a major orchestra like Minnesota are salaried, and paid year round. (There are, at the moment, 16 or 17 American orchestras that do the same, and dozens more that pay regular salaries to their musicians, but don't pay them year round.) For players in ensembles like this, the orchestra is our full-time job, and our contract more or less compels us to put our orchestral duties ahead of anything else we might choose to do on the side. (So the answer to Mike's last question is no, musicians in the Minnesota Orchestra typically don't have other jobs, although many of us teach, coach chamber music, or play in summer music festivals when we have the time.)
Small orchestras (small by budget size, that is) can sometimes be what's called "per-service," which means musicians are paid a set amount for each rehearsal and concert they play, and they may be guaranteed a minimum number of services per year, but it is generally not possible to make a living solely from a job in a per-service orchestra. One example of this type of orchestra would be the Minnesota Sinfonia.
Salaries in the orchestra business can range from less than $10,000 per year to well over $100,000. (Certain crucial players, like concertmasters, can even make multiple hundreds of thousands, if they're considered among the very best in the field.) There are a handful of bands at the top of the field (ours included) in which it is entirely possible to make a very comfortable living and support a family without a second income, but the vast majority of orchestral musicians never land one of those plum jobs. There are a lot more $30,000 a year jobs than $80,000 jobs in this business, and whenever a major orchestra announces an open spot, you can count on there being dozens or even hundreds of candidates lining up to audition. (In 1999, when I auditioned here, there were 122 violists competing for two chairs in the section.)
It's interesting that some people assumed that our cut-down orchestra for last week's Inside the Classics concerts was a budget decision. There's a pretty strict rule against that sort of thing - we play the music we play with the number of musicians it was meant to be played with, and leaving someone out to save money would not be acceptable under any circumstances. In Mendelssohn's time, orchestras were smaller than they are now, so we cut back our string section, and of course, didn't include any wind, brass, or percussion players unless Mendelssohn wrote a part for them. (Besides, since the orchestra's 98 full-time musicians are on salary, we wouldn't save any money by cutting players from a given show.)
Of course, we play excerpts from works other than the featured one at Inside the Classics shows, and those of you with sharp eyes last week may have noticed that our tuba player, Steve Campbell, was on stage to play the very first excerpt of the night, from Mendelssohn's overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, and that he then left the stage, never to return. I apologized to Steve before the show for making him come in to work just to play 4 minutes of music and then leave, but he gave me the same response you pretty much always get from musicians in that position: "Hey, no problem. It's my job."
We'll finish up answering Mike's questions tomorrow or Friday...
Q: How do financial matters impact the particulars of performances at Orchestra Hall? Do performances change based on attendance, interest, funding? Do finances have a role in deciding what/how performances are given? ([For instance,] we originally thought the smaller size of the orchestra at the Mendelssohn concert was due to economic conditions.) How are the musicians paid? Do they typically have other jobs?
That's a lot to answer in one shot, and they're all excellent questions, so I think the best thing to do is to break this up into two separate blog posts. I'm qualified to answer Mike's last two questions, so I'll do that here, and then we'll have someone involved in the orchestra's programming process answer the rest in a later post.
Musicians in a major orchestra like Minnesota are salaried, and paid year round. (There are, at the moment, 16 or 17 American orchestras that do the same, and dozens more that pay regular salaries to their musicians, but don't pay them year round.) For players in ensembles like this, the orchestra is our full-time job, and our contract more or less compels us to put our orchestral duties ahead of anything else we might choose to do on the side. (So the answer to Mike's last question is no, musicians in the Minnesota Orchestra typically don't have other jobs, although many of us teach, coach chamber music, or play in summer music festivals when we have the time.)
Small orchestras (small by budget size, that is) can sometimes be what's called "per-service," which means musicians are paid a set amount for each rehearsal and concert they play, and they may be guaranteed a minimum number of services per year, but it is generally not possible to make a living solely from a job in a per-service orchestra. One example of this type of orchestra would be the Minnesota Sinfonia.
Salaries in the orchestra business can range from less than $10,000 per year to well over $100,000. (Certain crucial players, like concertmasters, can even make multiple hundreds of thousands, if they're considered among the very best in the field.) There are a handful of bands at the top of the field (ours included) in which it is entirely possible to make a very comfortable living and support a family without a second income, but the vast majority of orchestral musicians never land one of those plum jobs. There are a lot more $30,000 a year jobs than $80,000 jobs in this business, and whenever a major orchestra announces an open spot, you can count on there being dozens or even hundreds of candidates lining up to audition. (In 1999, when I auditioned here, there were 122 violists competing for two chairs in the section.)
It's interesting that some people assumed that our cut-down orchestra for last week's Inside the Classics concerts was a budget decision. There's a pretty strict rule against that sort of thing - we play the music we play with the number of musicians it was meant to be played with, and leaving someone out to save money would not be acceptable under any circumstances. In Mendelssohn's time, orchestras were smaller than they are now, so we cut back our string section, and of course, didn't include any wind, brass, or percussion players unless Mendelssohn wrote a part for them. (Besides, since the orchestra's 98 full-time musicians are on salary, we wouldn't save any money by cutting players from a given show.)
Of course, we play excerpts from works other than the featured one at Inside the Classics shows, and those of you with sharp eyes last week may have noticed that our tuba player, Steve Campbell, was on stage to play the very first excerpt of the night, from Mendelssohn's overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, and that he then left the stage, never to return. I apologized to Steve before the show for making him come in to work just to play 4 minutes of music and then leave, but he gave me the same response you pretty much always get from musicians in that position: "Hey, no problem. It's my job."
We'll finish up answering Mike's questions tomorrow or Friday...
Labels: ask an expert, the business of music
posted by Sam at
3:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home