Posted by Joe S. on February 25, 2000 at 00:49:13:
In Reply to: what's up with orchestral playing? posted by ken k on February 24, 2000 at 23:28:37:
I think that you are right on.
To me, it is difficult to even think of the conservatory level schools,
San Francisco Conservatory, Eastman School of Music, Juilliard, Curtis, Oberlin, Indiana, Northwestern, Cleveland Institute, Peabody, New England Conservatory, etc., etc., etc. not to mention the Florida State / University of Texas / Rice type of schools
each cranking out a tuba performance major or so a year who will, for the next ten years of their lives (or until they become discouraged enough to quit trying), go around with 90 other tuba players (25 or 30 really good ones) auditioning for one tuba orchestral job every 18 months or so (one "good" one every 3-4 years).
Being honest, doing JUST THAT is what ALL of those young conservatory tuba performance graduates plan to do. None of them have concepts of "breaking into the jazz scene in Cincinatti", "playing in a service band at Fort Campbell, Kentucky", or "combining a weekly church orchestra job with a pick-up brass quintet, a nine-week subscription orchestra series with three add-on pops, and a few high school and jr. college students" to make a modest living. All of them envision themselves as grand orchestral tuba players in Cleveland, L.A., Chicago, Philly, NY, etc. "someday".
However, the United States is still (sort of) the "the Land of the free", and if a collection of people believe that type of job might be stimilating enough for them, and believe that that have the ability to "go for it", who are we to stop them...or to stop them from talking about it?
Postscript: Of course, very few of those conservatory graduates (Today, 4 year tuition and expenses is about $125,000 at those schools.) will ever land a "big" orchestral appointment - whether or not you or I believe that type of job alone is stimulating enough musically or not - BUT...
...as a very good friend of mine often says, "A BAD gig is FAR better than a GOOD job."