 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: John J. Moses
Date: 2004-07-12 23:42
http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=24030
"The players are seeking parity with the highly paid Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians, whose minimum salary will reach $108,160 in 2004–05 and $112,840 in 2005–06. The current Philadelphia Orchestra contract pays musicians a minimum of $105,040, which means players here are seeking about a 3 percent increase in the first year of a new contract."
JJM
Légère Artist
Clark W. Fobes Artist
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Author: William
Date: 2004-07-13 15:16
What about paid benefits such as health insurance, vacation, investment and retirement planning, etc?? These are issues that should be considered with any job application--not just the "big bucks".
Also, job security. Just what is "just cause"?? (one squeek too many??)
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Author: hans
Date: 2004-07-13 17:00
Very interesting, but when those salaries are multiplied by the probability of landing those jobs, the resulting "expectation" is still very low; i.e., IMO not many people would look at this as an attractive job objective.
Hans
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Author: diz
Date: 2004-07-13 22:18
In American you can afford highly paid orchestras because you have philanthropists ... Australian philanthropists are very few and far between and often support sport and ambulances (most vexingly).
I would doubt any of your big highly paid orchestra could survive on box office alone ... may orchestras have this problem, I'm afriad due to limited financial support.
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Author: Mario Poirier
Date: 2004-07-15 01:22
Salaries are a complex matter since money is a relative concept that cannot really be discussed out of the local context. Is 100K+ US per year in the North-East a good salary compared to similar positions in the US, Australia (or anywhere)? That depends.
I am reading on CNN that the average price of a Manhattan appartment has just reached the million dollars mark. I can only imagine what this can buy. I assume that most New York orchestral musicians have to live far from their place of work. I wonder how many of them own their own house for instance.
In order to be happy in life, we need a proper balance between material life-style (i.e.: mandatory and discretionary consumption), relationships (family, friends, community) and opportunity for accomplishments (first through work, but also through advocacies, hobbies).
In the life-style department, where we live is the most important component that affects our overall outlook in life. The car (the second biggest material expenditure) is inconsequential (except for those few unfortunate souls hostage to positional consumption). Making sure housing is taken care of first is therefore paramount.
So, in order to determine whether a salary if good, one has to ask: does this salary allow me to live in the kind of community I want, in the kind of housing I want.
Let me take Ottawa (my town) by comparison. For a similar position as principal in the NAC orchestra, you are looking at about 60K (plus some opportunities for university teaching, some free lancing and a few gigs). All of that should amount to around 90K. A rule of thumb is that housing should consume not more than 33% of your income. At 90K, you have access to 270K of housing. In Ottawa, 270K buys you a nice detached house in an established beautiful community within 30 minutes of your rehearsal and concert venue. I would say that somebody in Ottawa making 90K per year in total is actually better paid than his peer in New York (Ottawa is the 149th most expensive city in the World. New York and Boston are amongst the first 10).
Surprisingly, a family doctor in Ontario brings home (after all expenses are paid) only 100K. So, an established classical musician in Ottawa can aspire to the life style of similarly trained professional.
If the musician is married with a working spouse, things can even get better. "It is a nice job if you can get it of course."
The same probably applies for an Australian musician. Yes pay scales appear lower. But again money is a relative thing that needs to be measured in context and I am pretty sure Sydney musicians are actually ahead of their US counter part living in a big world-class US city.
Priorities change during our life. A young musician at the dawn of his/her career will put work as absolute first priority, and will move to New York to establish oneself, sharing a pad with 4 other people 1.5 hour from work by subway... With a family and kids, material well-being and relationships become important as well. This is why we hear about musicians living in the big city moving to another (usually less expensive) venue, especially if the move implies moving from second to first chair, from free-lancing to tenured faculty, from the big city to a state capital with a nice university and a good symphony, etc.
Based on my life-style preference, I would probably settle down in a place like Milwaukee or Cincinati should I move to the US. Cost of living there is actually excellent. There, money can go far.
But 100K in New York? That must be tough!
By the way, what we said applies to many other professions. In IT for instance, Ontario salaries are 75% of North-Est US. But our cost of living is about 50%. So, a 100K per year DBA can live like a king here in Ottawa, but would only scrape by on an 100K salary on Wall Street (my sister in law is a DBA with a small place on Staten Island and a job downtown Manhattan. She spends 2.5 hour per day commuting. She does not feel particularly well-off for sure.
Mario Poirier
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Author: Mark Pinner
Date: 2004-07-15 11:40
Lay off Mr. Packer Diz! He at least kept a live band on television 5 days per week for 40 weeks per year until he started listening to his bean counters. Australians are miserable bast*ards when it comes to paying for live entertainment. Put a $2 door charge on a dance and they will stay away in droves.
Our orchestral salaries range from about AU$50,000 for a rank and file pit orchestral player through a package in the mid AU$60,000's for a rank and file symphony player. Principals, concertmasters etc. earn proportionally more. One main difference, although this is changing, is that many jobs are tenured rather than contracted. There is no employer sponsored health fund rather a government funded, therefore piss poor, universal (ha ha) health fund called medicare. If you want private health cover, pay for it yourself. In fact if you want any meaningful health cover, pay for it yourself.
Fulltime service band jobs pay from the mid AU$40,000's at the base level with the possibility of progress as a player (sergeant/ petty officer level) of hitting the low AU$60K level. Any promotion above this usually precludes too much playing.
All employment of over $450 per month attracts a mandatory superannuation payment of 9% which the superannuation funds manage to reduce to an even more meaningless percentage. (After all, every honest dollar earned needs to be turned into ten dollars to support the finance industry and others who produce nothing)
It sounds like the conditions and salary levels in the USA are a tad higher than most other places! Salaries of $100K plus are a pipe dream for musicians in other countries.
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Author: Rick Williams
Date: 2004-07-15 21:01
Since everyone was talking about Cost of Living, for fun I ran the current base salary of the Phil. Orchestra which was reported as $105,040 and compared the cost of living with Boston, both cases renting and the equiv. salary needed in Boston was around $121,000, this using three different sets of data for the calculations.
Doing the same for Phil. to NY the figure was around $118,000 and that is living on Long Island.
Cincinnati you only need $87,000 for parity and for Cleveland $90,500
For Chicago, if living in the city, they would need $155,000. Now if willing to live a Blue train away in Elgin, they would only need $95,000.
So in rough terms, if you are renting, the cost of living is around 15% higher in Boston the Phil and leaps much higher if you are buying in the city. So based on these numbers, the Philly players are actually better off than their Boston counterparts.
Best
Rick
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2004-07-16 22:09
If the Guardian is to be believed, salaries in England are much lower than in the US, around US$50,000 to US$70,000:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1177219,00.html
Property prices in London may be lower than Manhattan, but are still high compared to these salaries. A modest family house in outer London will leave no change from £300,000, or US$500,000, eight or ten times these salaries.
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If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: Gazebo Dealer
Date: 2004-07-16 22:21
That's pretty sad that these players are demanding so much. Sure they are the cream of the crop, but there are hundreds out there with as much talent who are forced to take crappy gigs for a living. One of my lesson teachers(studied with David Weber and is good friends with Jon Manasse) recently tried out for an orchestra in west Texas where yearly salary was $8,000. His resume has to look terrific(undergraduate work in Israel, Bachelor's degree from Russia, Master's and Doctrine at Rice) That's less than a month's salary in Boston eh?
Post Edited (2004-07-16 22:22)
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2004-07-16 22:31
Gazebo Dealer wrote:
> That's pretty sad that these players are demanding so much.
I don't quite understand you. You're objecting to the high salaries? Or to the dearth of opportunities for high salaries?
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Author: Gazebo Dealer
Date: 2004-07-16 23:57
The music world is already in dire situation, and with the musicians demanding higher salaries, how does that help these orchestras staying above water? I'm pretty sure the attendance to BSO performances hasn't increased from say ten years ago. These guys are pretty well paid, but an excuse like "too many salary increases" isn't gonna make the public sympathise if the orchestra were to go under. Yeah these guys work hard- more than most athletes who work once a week a few months a year and get paid in the multi-million range. But just imagine if a goliath orchestra like Boston were to go under because of lack of funding. The Houston Symphony has come close to filing bankruptcy many times in the past few years. The musicians here have taken multiple pay cuts to keep the organization going, and I know this because several of them coached my chamber music group this summer. I consider the HSO a low first-class orchestra, and to see other players demanding gigantic salaries for an art that's being neglected by the masses, it doesn't make sense. I'd rather not suggest what the orchestras do with the money. But yeah these guys need salary increase, but now is possibly the worst time to demand it with stiff checkbooks and so many others waiting "hand and foot" on your position who would gladly take the current salary.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2004-07-17 00:59
100K/yr is NOT a "gigantic salary" by any means! It's not bad, but in today's dollars that's barely upper-middle class.
Most people I work with make in that range.
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Author: Keil
Date: 2004-07-17 02:38
You also have to take into consideration that these orchestra that pay this much are able to pay this much because of the large funding the do receive. The BSO generates a great amount of their income from the Boston Pops concerts. I think if anything the musicians are UNDER paid. These people have families to support and for the amount of work and the schooling, years of training, and outside equipment required, not to mention the longevity in the business they deserve far more than they are currently receiving.
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Author: diz
Date: 2004-07-18 22:28
I think we all agree musicans are underpaid ... you really need to weigh up the benefits of where you live considering the money you make. Even if I were able to get into the NYP and was tempted by the money offered, I wouldn't live there in a pink fit ... too many people, winters too cold. That doesn't stop me from spending vacation time there, however, from that angle NY is a buzz.
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