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For those of you who play with, have played, work stage/tech, or just in general know and hang around the symphonies how are there general attitudes towards their/your area? Our local symphony has a major snobbish attitude that I just don't get. I have friends and co-workers who play with small regional symphonies around the country, I've attended some meet and greets with a couple of larger organizations, and have met and talked with musicians from some big time orchestras around the country and have never experienced the snobbery that I do here. Have any of you experienced this?

To be fair, a few of the musicians (including the tubaist) are very down to earth and wonderful folks. I just don't get the attitude of the rest of them. I work the stage and help to manage the concert hall at the university and of all the events I have worked since I started there in September I have never felt demeaned like I felt with the symphony.

Thanks for allowing me to just vent a bit.

Thanks DP, I needed a good laugh. Maybe I'm just getting crabby with a birthday coming up and one year closer to 40 but I'm just getting to dam old to put up with this crap. I'm not some lowly little undergrad who doesn't know his way around a concert hall and even if I was, that's no way to treat people. The students working in the concert hall are there to do a job and to learn about how a hall works as many of them are music ed or theater majors so they need to have a basic understanding of how things should work. They are definitely not paid enough to be treated like that

A few musicians in a local regional orchestra come across (to me) as snobbish, whether on purpose or not. And a few of those few wouldn't give you the time of day.

I've spent an afternoon with a tubist in a top-5 American orchestra and he was by far one of the nicest, friendliest, down-to-earth people I've met and was not afraid of self-deprecating humor. It's awesome when you meet one of your role models and he ends up being a normal human. Well, as normal as tuba players get, at least.

The thing with community musicians getting big egos... who knows? I guess, as far as they're concerned, they're on top of (their) world and can't be bothered to come down, or even really improve or admit that they're wrong, sometimes. Que sera sera.

I play in a community orchestra, in fact just got back from a performance of Mahler 1. I've also played with a couple of other local orchestras and don't see any problems like you describe in the back row. The other rows however......................................

Tuba players have a reputation for being very friendly, confident, and eating up all the goodies at receptions.