Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
It’s just about that time of year again and the 2015 Orchestra Compensation Reports should be ready to publish by the end of the month. This year’s report will cover the 2012/13 season and it will be fascinating to see how things have changed since the previous season, which saw a real uptick in executive compensation and smaller improvements for music directors and concertmasters. In the meantime, you can feel free …
Last week’s orchestra compensation reports produced one of the most troubling instances in its nearly decade long history by way of discovering the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) implemented a policy designed to obfuscate their music director compensation. Moreover, when asked about the compensation data, the DSO refused to release the information, even though their music director provided his employer with permission to do exactly that. For the sake of perspective, the …
New for the 2014 Orchestra Compensation Review is the Big Picture overview of all stakeholder compensation. For the past two years, this has been one of the most requested features and I’m happy to provide it as part of this year’s reports. Consequently, in order to make room for all of the data, this post has to be published in a full page layout; it’s just that big… 13 Year Trends …
Although the average concertmaster in the list of those reported experienced an average increase of 3.69 percent, that figure was skewed a bit by a handful of very large increases among a few of the top earners. For example, The New York Philharmonic’s concertmaster went from earning a reported $517,432 in the 2010/11 season to $654,679 in 2011/12; likewise, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra’s concertmaster went from $507,063 in 2010/11 to $560,010 …
For the average music director, the 2011/12 season was a good year financially and from a historical perspective, it was the first time that average annual compensation broke the half-million threshold ($517,649 to be precise). Although a few high profile positions left vacant brought the average increase down from previous seasons, most music directors saw their earnings increase by at least 2.46 percent. The Data In order to provide information that …