Re: A couple of euphonium questions.....


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TubeNet BBS ] [ FAQ ]

Posted by reality check on March 09, 2003 at 15:44:35:

In Reply to: A couple of euphonium questions..... posted by Heather McDown on March 09, 2003 at 14:42:33:

The only person I know of who carved out a significant PART of their living playing the euphonium outside of a military band was Rich Matteson.

Significant means perhaps nearly half, and PART means early in his career he drove around the country with a station wagon full of new Meinl Weston tubas that he was selling and, later on, North Texas State hired him part time (or was it full time?) to teach jazz improv.
______________________

If you're absolutely certain that you don't want to be a band director and you don't want to be in a military band, your other options (outside of switching to trombone and making phenomenal advances) are eight years of study in music history or music theory as a doctoral level degree (with a euphonium performance "minor" perhaps) would be the only way to make yourself an attractive applicant for a university teaching job. Even if you were/are interested in being a military bandsman, in today's world you would need to be an extraordinary euphonium player even to win/earn/get/receive a regular "base band" position, much less a position in one of the "D.C." bands.

A decision that might take more courage (I'm not implying that this is the best choice for you...just that it might take a lot of courage.) is to "bail" and major in something else completely unrelated.

As far as the world of "performance" is concerned, I'll offer you this: My daughter graduated from the Eastman School of Music recently with an oboe performance degree. Just to get into Eastman, she had to attract attention with such accomplishments as playing principal oboe or solo English horn in the (high school) World Youth Symphony, etc., and then be one of only four applicants out of eighty that was offered admission to Eastman the year she applied. Further, her audition to get into the school had to be strong enough to encourage the school to offer her a substantial scholarship, as without it the annual costs to attend are well above $30,000 - factoring in all expenses. All of that being said, and as impressive as some of it might seem she has auditioned for several oboe jobs in the $20,000 - $50,000 range and has not yet made it past the preliminaries. Currently, her annual income (including an oboe performance and office work stipend from a prestigious and well-funded private university, private lesson income from high school students, selling Mary Kay cosmetics, and working in a music store in the summer) is about $12,000. Though that annual income amount is bleak, I would estimate that amount would be cut in half if she was trying to do this with the euphonium.

Finally, whether or not you decide to switch to trombone and become truly a trombone primadonna/virtuoso, there are far more orchestral oboe/English horn jobs open each year than trombone, so even though so far she has had no success whatsoever in advancing her career, a euphonium-converted-to-trombone player has even fewer chances to try.

Be optimistic and imaginative, but at the same time see what is really out there.


Follow Ups: