Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
It’s time to revisit base musician compensation levels at the top eight highest paying orchestras. For a number of these orchestras, the 2017/18 season marks the end of their existing collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and they have yet to ratify a new contract. In each of those instances, the outcomes will have a large impact on what many orchestra musicians consider their organization’s ability to compete for the best on-stage talent. …
At a time when both the LA Philharmonic and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra announced new CEOs within the span of one day, the Philadelphia Orchestra continues to be vexed by finding someone to fill their top executive gig. On the other side of that coin, Philly may have pulled out the chair for one or more candidates only to see them walk away. In another context, the timeline for all three …
Read moreIn The Game Of Executive Musical Chairs, Philly Can’t Find Someone To Sit Down
Currently, two of the top eight orchestras with the highest base musician annual salary are negotiating new collective bargaining agreements: National Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra. Interestingly enough, both of these ensembles are in positions where the outcome of those negotiations will likely have a larger impact on their future competitiveness than some of the upcoming negotiations for their peers. In order to visualize these distinctions, here’s a chart illustrating the current …
Read moreAn Updated Look At Top-Tier Musician Compensation 2016
Now that Cleveland has settled, we can begin to get a sense for how base musician compensation compares across the highest tier of big budget orchestras, which we’ll call The Big Eight (Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, LA, National, New York, Philly, and San Francisco). Granted, we’ll be updating this chart with Cleveland’s figures once that data is available and when it is, it will be interesting to see how they compare with Philly, …
Read moreLet’s Take A Look At Big Eight Musician Compensation
Ever since Facebook launched cover photos for profiles and pages in 2011, creative users have been pushing the boundaries of what can be done with the space. But for a field built atop creativity, most orchestra cover photos aren’t terribly creative. That doesn’t mean they aren’t any good; quite the contrary, most use overwhelmingly gorgeous glory shots of the full ensemble or rotate images to feature guest artists etc. I did …
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