The Orchestra Musician Job Offer: “No” Is An Option

Adaptistration People 174

It’s no secret that orchestra musician positions are highly competitive, even at ensembles that pay less than living wage. The statistical likelihood of becoming the finalist and receiving a job offer is, at best, dubious. Nonetheless, just because you end up with an offer doesn’t mean you should automatically accept. I’ve lost track of how many musicians I’ve worked with over the years who ended up regretting a decision to accept …

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A Worthwhile Concessionary Agreement Part 2

Part 1 in this set of articles examined the concept of board atrophy, a general deterioration of board stewardship, and how it is impacting an orchestra’s fundraising performance amidst the economic downturn. For the most part, this is every bit as serious a threat to the future of orchestras as the actual economic downturn. Today’s installment is going to examine a recent concessionary agreement at the Utah Symphony & Opera (US&O) …

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Regulated Institutional Transparency

Regular Adaptistration readers know that one of the central issues discussed here is finding ways to increase institutional transparency for American orchestras. Recently, I had a public online exchange with an executive administrator from a professional orchestra about the issue after they expressed their frustration over what they considered problems with the way some orchestra musician negotiation committees conduct themselves at the negotiation table…

Empowerment Issues

There is a big push among orchestra administrators to get musicians more involved within the inner workings of their orchestras. Although this isn’t a new idea, it is becoming more relevant, as we can observe from recent speeches by two of my favorite industry barometers: Michael Kaiser and Henry Fogel. In Mr. Kaiser’s recent address to the annual ICSOM conference (you can learn about Mr. Kaiser and his address in an …

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