concertmaster salaries!!!
ok - to extend a previous post on musicians starving and dying on the streets because of their "art", the latest string magazine reports 5 highest paying concertmaster salaries - all around $350,000. one is $343,000, while some are well around $360,000.
as a starving musician, i was too cheap to buy the magazine. i believe these five orchestras include cleveland, ny, la, ... blanking on the rest. anyone have the magazine?
it also reports these concertmaster wages more than double the union wages; though the article didn't go into specifics.
let's say, $350,000 / 2 - a little bit more? i think that's a reasonable estimate for top tier orchestra section members - perhaps ball park figures that mr. daniel B. was looking for in the previous post.
just food for thought, since we can't afford real food, apparently.
go bears!
ps. sarah chang was named one of the top 20 powerful people by newsweek magazine. whoa.
Replies (13)
There are ways to pay without it appearing in salary.
we (at the Seattle Symphony Orchestra) are still searching for one..................
Thanks for the info Eric
Ladies and gentleman: start your Heldenlebens!
seattle still has no concertmaster? talk about high standards...
yes I can't believe myself.
We've had some great people come already, who went on to get positions in major orchestras.
You can't compare that directly to regular salaries, because according to the other thread, it's apparently for only 12 weeks of work. Yeah, I know he practiced 12 hours a day since he was three. Everybody did somethin' or other though.
I think if you look hard enough in most towns you'll find the "starving artists" that you're wondering about. In this society one thing we reward is conformity. In a sense, playing from a page following established rules, in time honored surroundings, in time honored dress is that, so it shouldn't completely surprise. I'm tickled to death he's making more than someone doing an equivalent but lifeless thing in the same city. I stumbled into a place a couple months ago and got to know some people. They were having a benefit for a musician who died, and his wife and little daughter were there, and the people were taking up a collection because they had no money to cover his burial expenses. I had known some of them before, from various jam nights at bars around town. I always thought they were doing it for fun, but was told there that there is a collection jar present at them, which they split. I can't imagine doing something, anything at all, for five or ten dollars. That seems like nothing to me, like a penny that's not worth the trouble to bend over to pick up. I bummed around some as a kid, so I understand what five dollars can mean, but I've been a conformist for a long time now!
Hi,
Gennady - If you think that is bad, imagine that the NACO has had no concermaster for 2 years now, and as of this season, no associate concertmaster either! No first desk... Eessshhh...
Cheers!
Alexander Barantschik of the San Francisco Symphony received $366,000 in 2002
"Hi,
Gennady - If you think that is bad, imagine that the NACO has had no concermaster for 2 years now, and as of this season, no associate concertmaster either! No first desk... Eessshhh...
Cheers!"
I may be wrong but I get the impression that both orchestras are suffering from problematic leadership on the podium at least with respect to personnel. On the bright side, NACO's loss is Montreal's gain.
That wouldn't surprise me, in major orchestras the concertmaster position is considered both a player and a managerial position, so those numbers don't surprise me. Rumor has it that the concermaster of the NYPhil is around 500k with everything thrown in (though that could also represent total income, including the concertmaster salary + income from teaching and such,but I heard it as the contractual salary). Even line player positions in the big orchestras pay pretty well, the big orchestras have salaries into the 6 figure range, and even in some bigger regional orchestras players are making close to that figure. Obviously, this is not the bulk majority of orchestras out there, but probably represents the levels in the NY, Philadephia, Boston, london, berlin, etc......
Unless things have changed a lot, you might delete London from that list. Their orchestras are notoriously close to the wall, financially.
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January 22, 2007 at 04:05 AM · oop - correction. 20 top women on leadership...not most powerful : P