Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
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Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
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Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#2I remember listening to a piano concerto + symphony one evening live at a concert hall and thinking how it was possible that this orchestra of 50+ plus a famous soloist makes money on our $100 tickets (best seats).
Here we are paying $100 for 50 top notch world class musicians playing for 3 hours.
There were maybe 500 people in the concert hall, so at an average ticket price of $50 each musician (split evenly) would have gotten max 500 bucks.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#3Would love to read this but it’s got a redirect/reload loop. At least on an iPhone.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#4I remember listening to a piano concerto + symphony one evening live at a concert hall and thinking how it was possible that this orchestra of 50+ plus a famous soloist makes money on our $100 tickets (best seats). Here we are paying $100 for 50 top notch world class musicians playing for 3 hours. There were maybe 500 people in the concert hall, so at an average ticket price of $50 each musician (split evenly) would…
The financing can be complex, but broadly there are a few things that enable modern American orchestras to survive.
1. Benefactors who give money to the orchestra, rent boxes, etc. 2. Popular (non classical) concerts which have a possibly larger crowd and varied material. Harry Potter with orchestral accompaniment? Tenacious D with orchestral accompaniment? The musicians hate it, it pays the bills. 3. A mostly part time staff. Most orchestral musicians will play in many orchestras, teach, etc.
They made a loss on your concert. But they knew they would.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#5Miserable job. Highly competitive, low pay, limited autonomy. Had a colleague once who switched to IT from being an orchestral musician. Caveat: single data point.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#6I remember listening to a piano concerto + symphony one evening live at a concert hall and thinking how it was possible that this orchestra of 50+ plus a famous soloist makes money on our $100 tickets (best seats). Here we are paying $100 for 50 top notch world class musicians playing for 3 hours. There were maybe 500 people in the concert hall, so at an average ticket price of $50 each musician (split evenly) would…
Not to spoil your day, but if you subtract back out the costs of the venue it might be less than half that.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#7I once saw a FoF playing in the Sydney Symphony and then met them at the bar in the harbour for a messy evening of drinking. They were joined by many colleagues. The conversations I eavesdropped on were quite epic:
“No I don’t think it was a mistake to do crystal meth, it was just a mistake to do it in the first day”
And other such tidbits which suggested their lives were anything like described in the article. Maybe both situations are possible, but it seemed that tenured orchestral musicians lived a Life of Riley, and good for them.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#8I remember listening to a piano concerto + symphony one evening live at a concert hall and thinking how it was possible that this orchestra of 50+ plus a famous soloist makes money on our $100 tickets (best seats). Here we are paying $100 for 50 top notch world class musicians playing for 3 hours. There were maybe 500 people in the concert hall, so at an average ticket price of $50 each musician (split evenly) would…
When I'm at a classical music concert I feel strongly that I'm part of a culture. Here's music written 300 years ago that we're actively conspiring to conserve. None of it really makes any money - not for the musicians who have spent their lives getting good enough to play it, not for the mostly amateur promoters, not for the taxpayers who probably bear the bulk of the costs of the thing - but we do it anyway. Even the bulk of the audience are probably not real afficionados, but still see value in it. I think it's kind of a lovely thing
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#9This seems to me like a job where the output quality of a worker is extremely difficult to measure; it's difficult to tell if one excellent musician is better than another excellent musician. Surely beyond a certain point, it's subjective.
People tend to want to think of themselves as being objectively talented and as being deserving of credit; but in certain professions, there is no such thing.
Art is rich people's subjectivity being passed off as objectivity. It can't be easy to base your entire professional self-esteem on the whims and moods of the rich people who fund the industry. In a slightly different world, the definitions of 'good' and 'excellent' would be completely different.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#10I remember listening to a piano concerto + symphony one evening live at a concert hall and thinking how it was possible that this orchestra of 50+ plus a famous soloist makes money on our $100 tickets (best seats). Here we are paying $100 for 50 top notch world class musicians playing for 3 hours. There were maybe 500 people in the concert hall, so at an average ticket price of $50 each musician (split evenly) would…
By comparison, how much do you earn per day? I think $500 per day would be a decent income for them, but as someone else pointed out, the venue probably takes up a big chunk, taxes another, the people involved that you don't see, etc so they wouldn't be getting that amount.
And it's not like they have a 3 hour workday either, before that performance is going to be hours and hours of practice, years of training, and on the day itself X amount of traveling (more if they're international / on tour), getting dressed up, setting up, settling in, etc.