Author: mrn
Date: 2010-01-18 23:47
USFBassClarinet wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, what is the average pay for the other
> big orchestras in the U.S? and how much more do they really
> make considering Cost of Living?
The data in the following link is a little out of date, but probably still pretty valid.
http://www.adaptistration.com/2009/06/05/2009-compensation-report-concertmasters/
When I tried punching in some of these figures into one of those cost of living calculators on the web, it appeared that, when adjusted for cost of living, the musicians of the Cleveland Orchestra are probably the best paid orchestra musicians in the whole country.
I can't fault the Cleveland musicians for not wanting to take a paycut, though. Who wants to take a cut in salary?
At the same time, however, I can't help but question whether the position the musicians are taking is realistic, particularly the idea that this temporary paycut measure will degrade the quality of the orchestra by discouraging good players from considering seeking employment with the Cleveland Orchestra. If there were really enough good-paying full-time orchestra openings out there for somebody to turn their nose up at Cleveland because the pay was too low, I'd have tried to make a go at a professional orchestra career, myself. The problem is that there just aren't that many spots--and virtually none that pay what Cleveland pays.
And as for comparing major symphony players to teachers, I think by making the argument they are, the musicians of TCO have basically invited such comparisons. The argument the politicians always make is that our education system would be better if we paid teachers more, because you have to have sufficiently high pay to attract the most talented people--exactly the same argument as the TCO musicians are making. It's a debatable argument, even with regard to teachers (I had some great teachers, for instance--clearly some people just "follow their bliss" and don't worry about the money). But at least with teachers, there are enough teaching positions out there that with higher pay, some talented people whose only reservation about going into teaching is salary might find it worth their while to choose teaching as a profession if the pay was good enough. (Teaching isn't that bad, actually. What you give up in salary is often made up for, at least in part, with job stability and decent benefits--at least it used to be this way)
With top-tier symphony musicians, though, the situation is quite different. There are not enough jobs around and too many applicants for anyone to be that selective about where they apply. Perhaps there are not enough sufficiently talented applicants out there to fill these few spots, either (as the recent failure to hire new principal clarinetists in several top orchestras suggests), but a slight percentage difference in salaries between a handful of orchestras is really not going to be enough inducement to convince some hidden talent in the amateur world to give up computer programming or practicing medicine so they can practice 4-6 hours a day and audition for TCO. And for people already in top-tier orchestras, money isn't the only factor at play, either--Ricardo Morales' not wanting to leave Philadelphia is a case in point. He probably would have made more money in Chicago.
(The other thing that the whole NY Phil/CSO audition episode has demonstrated is that if any musician thinks they are good enough to be able to just walk into any major orchestra in the country they want to and get any job they want, they've got a pretty overly-inflated ego. It's tough to get a good orchestra job, even for the best players in the country.)
Incidentally, this same argument regarding the need for the best talent is also used to justify the obscenely high salaries made by some of the birdbrained corporate executives who helped get us into this economic mess in the first place. Clearly that sort of economic reasoning, while theoretically valid up to a point, can only be taken so far. At some point fiscal reality has to set in.
So while I don't question the motives of the TCO musicians and I certainly don't wish to pass judgment on them, I do have to question whether they are fully in touch with the economic realities surrounding their situation. One post from the musicians' blog really stood out to me in this regard. If you click the below link, you will see a post from a Lisa Boyko, violist. She claims that the ~$140,000 average compensation figures in the orchestra's e-mail press release are overly inflated and that "[t]he salary figure published was not the base salary currently under discussion, but probably that of the highest-paid and most senior principal player."
[Edit -- oops, forgot the link. Here it is http://www.clevelandorchestramusicians.org/blog/]
Clearly neither she nor (apparently) many of the other musicians in the orchestra (because obviously nobody did anything about her having posted what she said) have a realistic idea of what kinds of paychecks their fellow orchestra members are bringing home. In the 2006-07 season, TCO's concertmaster's annual compensation was $478,079, the highest in the country (in real dollars, not just purchasing power)! (see the first link above)
IMHO, the only way for the best-paying orchestra in the land (or one of them, anyway) to maintain consistently high artistic standards is to basically do what Szell did, which was to insist on a certain level of excellence from everyone (it also takes having a director with the talent of someone like Szell, who knows what that level of excellence sounds like). The ironic thing, in light of what the musicians are now arguing, is that in Cleveland's heyday, under Szell, the musicians didn't have it nearly as great as they do now. They didn't have 52-week contracts (I think if I read TCO's website correctly, they went to a 52-week season in 1968) with 10 weeks of paid vacation time (which is pretty much unheard of in other professions, I might add), and Szell was famous for firing musicians who, in his opinion, didn't cut it (so obviously they didn't have a tenure system--I wonder if they have one now).
Not that I would want them to go back to running everything the way it was in Szell's day--I think pro orchestra players deserve to be paid commensurate with their high level of training--but I do think there's something to be said for the old-fashioned idea that the music's got to come first. In my opinion, Cleveland's stated goal of hiring a bunch of famous people or "titled players," as they call them, is not the way to build a great orchestra. Whatever happened to hiring *good* players who can play well together as an ensemble? When did name recognition trump musical talent?
Post Edited (2010-01-19 13:23)
|
|
The Clarinet BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
