Posted by Rick Denney on May 09, 2003 at 15:58:05:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Orchestra Salaries posted by I'm... on May 09, 2003 at 15:10:02:
Thank you for the lesson in how to state one's opinion. I'm sure I will benefit greatly from it.
Perhaps it is different when you limit it to just ICSOM orchestras, but I've been a patron of symphonies that have performed 10 concerts a year, 16 concerts a year, 24 concerts a year, and 32 concerts a year, plus the associated other stuff. It seems to me that all of them have had a season that started in September and ended in May. Thus, I can't square your statements of the number of services per week being the same for each orchestra with my own observation. Maybe it's a situation of having more weeks off during the season, which I personally would not like. It is a bit like teachers comparing their 9-month salaries to the 12-month salaries of other folk. I'd be quite tempted to take the summer off for a corresponding reduction in pay, heh, heh. But the options hasn't been granted. (I'm not saying that teacher fare as well as they should--in some cases at least--even when their salaries are annualized.)
Regarding Detective Bergson, he and I are friends now. But if someone came on this board saying those things about me with no more establishment of bona fides than did the good detective in his first post, I would hope that others would visibly and aggressively drape it extreme skepticism until some credibility was established. It is too easy for public forums to be used as a weapon--the first response is (and should be) to parry the thrust. I'd much rather back-pedal later than to sit idly by while someone was being slandered harmfully.
If you think I've stepped off the cliff before, just wait till you see this, heh, heh:
Regarding the salary issue, I hear musicians frequently complain that they are treated like "non-professionals", and not like other highly educated professionals, including college professors, doctors, lawyers, and even (dare I to presume) some engineers. That statement has come up even in this thread (though for a slightly different reason). I have nothing but respect and huge admiration for the talent, dedication, study, drive, and effort required to succeed as a musician, especially a classical musician. But if musicians organize like non-professionals, negotiate like non-professionals, and talk about their salaries and contract terms like non-professionals, then one can hardly complain that they are not treated like college professors, doctors, lawyers (or even engineers outside of the Boeing factory). You will rarely hear such discussions among those professional groups, because they would consider it unprofessional. They usually do their salary negotiating in private, even when they have representation. This is true even of those college professors, doctors, lawyers, and engineers who are not successful and who wouldn't compare very well to the salaries on your list (as I didn't when I worked for municipal agencies). Now, before you give me another lecture on how to state my ideas, let me repeat that I think of musicians as professionals in the most complimentary sense of that word, and I wish for them all the success in the world. Most that I know do everything they can on an individual basis to keep their salary negotiations to themselves, and in so doing maintain a high level of professionalism. But (ahem... in my opinion) people often perceive us as we present ourselves as a group, and repeated public discussions about salary comparisons and contract terms don't, in my opinion, help their cause.
Rick "who might be more apologetic if he knew who he was talking to" Denney