harold wrote:Here's the point for those that tried to flame me:
It is absolutely despicable that an orchestra feels that $31,000 is an appropriate amount to pay someone with the type of education and experience required to fill this position.
200 sevices at $156 a service. How many rehearsals and how much practice time? If you add all of this, then the compensation is much worse. In Washington State, the minimum wage is over $7/hr - and this probably doesn't meet that.
If I were resonsible for the finances of an orchestra, I would BANK on the point made by several of you:
We do it for the love, not the cash.
This tells me that no matter how poorly the compensation is structured, some guy is going to be willing to accept the position regardless of the compensation.
But then again, love doesn't feed your family or pay your bills. Tell the landlord that it is all about love and you will be sitting on the street.
Take a look at the website of any major orchestra. Read the biographies. Never in any other specialty - aside from library science - will you find such well educated people willing to work for so little money. The military bands? A good option if you meet the criteria and don't mind the lifestyle.
Can you change this? Probably not as long as someone is willing to work for whatever you are offering - and there is always someone.
Interesting to note that there aren't many people that love working on cars so much that they are willing to do it for minimum wage. Same thing with performing appendectomies or nearly any other type of employment requiring professional training and education.
At what point does it become less about love and more about fair compensation?
Does the orchestra bank on the fact that there are outside teaching opportunities so that you can supplement your salary? If I were the comptroller for the organization I would.
I can also tell you with certainty that $31K annually isn't going to get you very far even in Toledo.
So, how do tubists get paid better? Part of the problem is the union contract - I'm assuming that most of these are union gigs.
There are a few ways of doing this.
First, the orchestra needs to find a better way of finding community support. There are thousands of ways of doing this, but if the community doesn't see the value of having professional musicians, we might as well have big auditoriums with screens and prerecorded soundtracks. Wait, we already do - they are called movie theaters.
As an interesting side note, movie theaters generate far more money from the concessions than they do the films. Does this have an application here? I don't know, but it is an interesting idea.
Second, the people responsible for the fiscal management of orchestras should work out a deal with the local teaching institutions so that the teaching jobs are directly tied to the playing jobs. This allows a much better compensatin package which would obviously attract far more interest and potentially better players.
How many of you are going to apply for Toledo? How many would if it were paying 90K a year?
Third, the union needs to step up their representation. These guys are NOT someone that plays on a streetcorner, but classically trained and educated professionals. The track record of representation historically has been less than stellar. They need to find a better way of protecting the interests of the players.
In this aspect, the players also need to become more responsible. You need to show the public why they need to support professional musicians.
I have a pretty good job and work in an industry that has millions of well paid professionals working in every comunity across the country. I have NEVER been approached by any arts organizations in any of the communities I have worked in seeking support.
My experience has been that is is always my responsibility to find them and offer them my money - never theirs to come looking for it.
How many guys have accepted a position like Toledo and then found out that they couldn't afford to keep the job? There was a tuba instructor at Arizona State that made far more money selling real estate - so he quit teaching so he could better provide for his family. There are guys on this BBS that have left jobs that they loved because of "Financial Reality".
What happens if every potential applicant at Toledo declines the audition because the money is marginal?
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