Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Freeway Philly


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Posted by Rick Denney on February 07, 2002 at 12:26:31:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Freeway Philly posted by Jon on February 06, 2002 at 22:19:55:

While we all feel terrible about the plight that Tony faces, I can tell from my own metro area that there are more positions. Orchestras that would not have paid tuba players in the past now routinely do. And orchestras that were traditionally amateur are now semipro. Even where I used to live in Dallas, I subbed in the Mesquite Symphony. It was an amateur group then, and now it pays its musicians. The Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex went from one full-time orchestra gig and perhaps two or three part-time gigs to probably something more like 7 or 8 paying gigs. Fort Worth may be full-time by now (Ed?), but it did not used to be.

Lots of suburban towns are now paying their musicians in ways that didn't used to be the case. A few of them (and a few urban symphony orchestras) are having problems, which is terrible for those musicians, but I'm not sure those problems represent the long-term trend. (They represent a short-term trend caused by a shift in charitable giving resulting from the terrorist attacks, plus the usual mixture of moronic management.)

This is just how it appears from the outside. As an amateur, I've seen a decline in the number of orchestral opportunities for amateurs, because many of these opporunities have turned professional.

Rick "who can't even compete with the amateurs" Denney


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