Posted by Rick Denney on March 24, 2003 at 09:49:19:
In Reply to: Re: Accompanist Payment Issue Advice Neede posted by Carroll on March 24, 2003 at 09:00:54:
I have to agree with the young chap on this one. The pianist should know the material at the first rehearsal, and if she doesn't, she is in breach of an implicit contract to provide accompaniment at an hourly fee.
When my customers hire me, they pay an hourly fee. They don't pay for on-the-job training--that's part of my company's overhead, which goes into that hourly fee. Her after-hours preparation should be part of her hourly fee (and $30 an hour would seem to provide sufficient margin for that for a fellow student). The better she is, the more she takes home on an hourly basis, which is as it should be.
The pianist made several mistakes. One was not showing up prepared. If she had a problem with the difficulty of the music, she should have stated so on first review, and invited the lad to seek services elsewhere. As in, "I'm sorry, but this music will require more preparation than I bargained for. Charles over there can play it at sight, but I'll need X hours of preparation time before the first rehearsal, at Y rate." One assumes Charles would get the higher rate in the first place. Also, when a rehearsal extended beyond an agreed deadline, she should have announced that it was going beyond their agreement beforehand.
The original poster is not without his mistakes, too. He should have agreed to the number of hours, brought the music to the first meeting to confirm that she knew what she was bargaining for, and explicitly complained that she was not prepared and therefore more rehearsal was required and that he expected her to provide that. Again, that should have been done before the boundary was crossed, so that any disagreement could be worked out in advance.
In addition to Joe's question, I wonder why the schools don't require written contracts with the terms explicitly stated in them. Written contracts are only in part an enforcement tool; mostly they force the parties to be clear about their expectations. Furthermore, given that a recital is a one-time event, I wonder why it isn't paid per service instead of hourly, as with most professional free-lance musicians, using a College-approved standard contract.
Rick "been there, done that, but not in the musical context" Denney