Re: Re: Re: salary


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TubeNet BBS ] [ FAQ ]

Posted by Jay Bertolet on July 26, 1999 at 18:06:36:

In Reply to: Re: Re: salary posted by chuck on July 26, 1999 at 01:54:05:

It ain't necessarily so. The example Joe posted is what I would call a much better than average situation. With tuba positions, things are always easier because of the smaller number of musical works the tuba is involved in. However, my experience has been that this is both a blessing and a curse. Obviously, the blessing is more time off. But the curse is an exceptionally irregular schedule where holding down another job would be next to impossible. For example, what employer is in a position to give you daytime hours one week, then nighttime hours the next? Often times with smaller orchestras, they try to maximize the number of performances they can do versus the number of rehearsals required to prepare the program. Inevitably what you get is a week of rehearsals followed by a week of concerts. The orchestra I play in used to try and schedule only nighttime and weekend services but that ended the second year I was here (1986-87) and several of the musicians in the orchestra had to quit so they could keep their better paying day jobs. But really, this type of thinking and planning is only typical of orchestras with very small budgets. Any orchestra that has salaried positions and guarantees something like a seven or eight service week usually expects to be able to schedule things any old time they want. The very worst situations are ones like the orchestra I play in where we do hours just like the very top level orchestras but we only get paid less than half those wages. The only respite for players in these orchestras is the time off you get in the summer. Usually, such situations are not 52 week seasons, but less than that. But even this is misleading because a standard 52 week season orchestra gets a minimum of 8 weeks paid vacation so they're actually working only 44 weeks. Our orchestra, for example, has a 43 week season but only 4 weeks of paid vacation. For the other 9 weeks of the year, we're on our own meaning no paychecks. That leaves unemployment of just saving enough money during the season to make it until the next season starts. We used to have a slightly shorter season, around 39 or 40 weeks, and that allowed many of our players to take jobs at summer festivals like the Santa Fe Opera and Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. But now our season extends into the summer festival schedules and many of our players had to relinquish their summer jobs.

I don't want to sound too negative about things here because while they could be better, they could also be alot worse! I think its just typical of the growing pains an orchestra of our size has when we're on the verge of becoming one of the very prestigious jobs around. I'm confident things will work out in time. But to answer your question, I feel that the only jobs I can carry while in the orchestra (and I have more free time than most) are teaching jobs like I have at FIU and the New World High School. Such jobs (where I teach private lessons to tuba and euphonium students) are only possible to maintain because I can arrange my schedule with the students to fit my work schedule. It is sometime a real shuffle (as any of my former students will tell you) but at least my students get all their lessons and the pay from these lessons gives me plenty of beer money! :)


Follow Ups: