Musician Issues

Orchestra Musician Compensation Resources For Audition Candidates

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Adaptistration People 138

Yesterday’s post on improving the audition process generated a good round of discussion but one comment in particular about the lack of pay information provided in audition announcements among smaller and mid-size budget orchestras stood out. Great list of suggestions! There’s just one other thing from Vu Le’s list that I’d love to see given greater emphasis in the audition world – salary disclosure. Legendary orchestras that are known to pay …

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Improving The Musician Audition Process

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Adaptistration People 093

Before we dive too far into this rabbit hole of a topic, we should confirm that the apply-audition-award method that is the typical professional US orchestra process is perhaps best described as the “best bad option available.” This isn’t a post about reinventing the wheel, rather, it’s about looking under a few rocks to shed some transparency on an otherwise murky topic. For whatever reason, my inbox has been flooded as …

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All Sorts Of #TestFail Going On For The “How Much Do You Know About Musicians” Quiz

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Adaptistration People 011

Last week, I published a fun little quiz to see how much readers really knew about musician wages, benefits, and working conditions. On the positive side of things, participation was fantastic thanks to nearly 500 readers completing all twelve questions. On the other side of that coin were the results: readers either aced it or bought the farm with absolutely nothing between those extreme grades. [chart id=”8″] As one reader justifiably …

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It’s Time To See How Much You Really Know About Musicians

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Adaptistration People 150

A discussion thread from the 2/22/16 article about musician paid vacation time got me thinking about how much those inside (and out) of the field really know about the business. Although information and transparency is somewhat better now than it was 15 years ago, most stakeholders still tend to know a lot about the terms of their own institution’s collective bargaining agreement, but not very much about how it stacks up …

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Variances, Exceptions, And Special Considerations! Oh My!

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Adaptistration People 023

Imagine for a moment that you’re passionate about Haggis, so much so that you went to school to study everything you could learn about Haggis and earned a degree in Culinary Arts with the goal of launching your very own startup food truck that does nothing but produce Haggis dishes, let’s call it Pluck You*. Since you’re in startup mode, Pluck You does generate revenue but not enough to live on …

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