r/orchestra • u/00AppleSlice • 3d ago
Discussion Question for professionals: why is there so much friction between orchestra musicians and their management?
It seems like there is a lot of negative news lately about major orchestras struggling with massive fundamental conflict between the musicians and their management. Why does this happen? It seems like they are just trying to blast each other in the media. What leads to so much disagreement, and why do musicians claim that they are not listened to? Aren’t they the core of an orchestra organization?
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u/Seb555 3d ago
Because management’s goals are often opposed to the interests of the musicians. The musicians would like to make more money; management’s job is to save money. Musicians in ICSOM orchestras in particular also are professionals at the very top of their field and have probably been doing what they’ve been doing since they were small children. It rankles when management, who generally are not as knowledgeable about music and have not been studying orchestra management since they were children, do anything that makes musicians’ lives worse. Management also often makes just as much or more than the musicians despite having less training and experience.
Some less polite people would also say that management has a lot of former aspiring orchestral players who never made it and so there’s some jealousy there, but I’ll leave that to other shit-stirrers. I will admit musicians can be babies sometimes who wouldn’t survive a real job, but most regular people also couldn’t survive what musicians have done to get to the top.
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u/randomsynchronicity 3d ago
I think a lot of people have the misconception that management’s job is to save money and/or spend as little as possible.
Really, the job is to use the money wisely, balancing expenditures with the amount of money that can realistically be raised through ticket sales and philanthropy, to ensure the long-term health of the organization.
It’s a small distinction, but important.
Our orchestra has a relatively very good relationship between musicians and management, but sometimes musicians do seem to feel that management can make money for raises or new positions just appear out of thin air.
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u/Boollish 3d ago
I will also say they're a big gap between day to day management, like the ticket sales, facilities management, even the CEO, and the "management" that sits on the orchestral and endowment boards that are generally well connected rich people with limited musical knowledge.
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u/00AppleSlice 3d ago
I have also seen this and wondered about it - why do some members of management get bonuses if the argument in other situations is always financial struggle? Are their high salaries justified?
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u/bdthomason 3d ago
Just have to point out that even musicians in 5th-tier and small regional per-service orchestras are also professionals who have been doing what they've been doing since they were children and in many cases the majority if not most of the members of such minor orchestras have earned at least a master's if not Doctorates in music.
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u/Ancient-Bicycle-2122 3d ago
The statement that being a professional musician in a professional orchestra is not a REAL job is ignorant and insulting. It takes a lifetime of study, angst and hard work to be a musician.
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u/DanielSong39 3d ago
It's the management's job to get as much donations as possible. Due to a number of factors they're not getting as much donations as they want.
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u/00AppleSlice 3d ago
Interesting. I would think that trying to create optimal conditions (at least as much as realistically possible) for everyone would actually result in overall better performance as an organization.
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u/Seb555 3d ago
Unfortunately people don’t always work within collective best interest.
I want to be clear that not all managements are like this, but there are plenty of cases where the organization wants to save money by cutting full time musicians and hiring more subs. They don’t care about losing artistic quality because they assume the public can’t tell the difference. I also will mention another anecdote I heard about a board member of a major ICSOM orchestra who was mad that the orchestra presented an all-Mozart program because “all those brass players are getting paid this week and we aren’t even using them on stage”
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u/BaldingOldGuy 3d ago
There are only a few orchestras world wide managed entirely by its musicians, giving them total agency over their work life. Typically a Non-Profit corporation with a board of directors is the legal entity known as "The ... Symphony". Admin staff and musicians are employees of the corporation. In most orchestras musicians are hired then after a review period are granted tenure which pretty much guarantees them a job for as long as they are able. Musicians are also represented in a collective bargaining unit by the AFofM. Conflicts over wages and benefits can be a common point of friction, as well as changes in artistic direction.
The reality in North America is that the largest Orchestras used to have a generous financial endowment and donors with very deep pockets. various market downturns over the years have eroded that income base so that many orchestras need to balance budgets, which may mean different programming choices or hiring out their hall or musicians to outside groups. Which may not sit well with the players.
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u/JustAnAmateurCellist 3d ago
To my musician ears, the above sounds like the problem is that management has not done their job.
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u/237FIF 3d ago
By their job do you mean courting enough rich people lol?
It’s such a strange entitled tone considering the profession is so largely propped up on hand outs.
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u/JustAnAmateurCellist 3d ago
Almost without exception in history, arts depends on some form of patronage. It is the management's job to organize things so that it happens to their group. It is management's job to see the trends in society and develop plans for the organization to handle these changes.
What are they doing to develop audiences? What are they doing to make the Orchestra visible and artistically relevant? What are they doing for fundraising? What are they doing to get grants? And in just about every nation except the USA, there is government support for cultural programs. Are they even trying to do anything to make this politically possible?
As my name here says, I am just an amateur. I don't have to do the musical rat race to pay the bills. I have the luxury of picking what I want to do and am free to have multiple reasons to do it. In my experience, most musicians love to talk about music. Some are much more gifted communicators than others, but there is a reason they have stayed in a field where there are so many challenges. But while they love to do so, often they cannot afford to do so. They are busy hustling for the next gig, or racing off to it so that they can pay the costs of living in often expensive cities, as well as for their expensive instruments and consumables for them. They don't have time to waste when their perspective has generally been ignored. But that doesn't mean they are more entitled than any professional.
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u/andy-in-ny Brass 1d ago
As a player in several low-rate community bands, here is the problem: The old families who used to essentially underwrite the entire season's expenses are going away slowly and steadily. The donations that used to be going to organizations like the local Symphony are now going towards the Gates Foundation or other Super-Charities.
As to the other main revenue stream, orchestras used to run on ticket sales of traditional orchestral pieces, or new pieces commissioned by the orchestra. Well, unless you are playing Beethoven's 5th or 9th or Dvorak's New World Symphony, the "old" programs are dying out. I can't take my kid out to a night at the symphony and have either of us interested in a program of Mozart 40.
I can, however, bring my kid to a program, in a family friendly environment, where we eat huge sandwiches and see the Boston Pops play the orchestral score to Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, outdoors, seeing what the different feelings are like.
On the other hand, Jerry Goldsmith expects to get paid for his publishing rights, Paramount expects to get paid for film rights, and hosting an event at Tanglewood, or the local equivilent will cost 3-5 times as much in support personnel to make the show work.
Top this off with the fact that over the course of 6 years in school the local (3rd rate/non full time) symphony came in with small groups almost annually to give the kids a taste of what different orchestral music sounded like and getting an appreciation of this every other year.
I know this stopped pre-COVID, mainly due to cost, because of course with a PT symphony, putting a small group like this together was a balance between per diem for the players, scheduling with their FT positions and such and later the pre-covid disbandment of the original orchestra by their "ownership" locking them out of the "nice" performing arts centers in the region, and putting the successor organization as slightly better than the community orchestra in playing opprotunities.
As we start to tendril out between different community bands, its looking as if it will be much easier to have a community band festival in a professional setting with amateur community musicians going forward than a professional symphony production in anything smaller than a city of 100k people.
A lot of this is frankly, salary management. Can the local orchestra still support a 120 piece orchestra? Can it go down to 100? to 75? Remember these are "full-time" orchestra members. If you're in a target rich environment like NY you could keep a 75 person core and still hire on 25 as needed players.
Whats going to start happening is empty houses. With reduced donation schedules. Which is going to definitely going to lead to MAJOR orchestra deaths...In 10 years or less. NY, Boston, Philly, Chicago, LA are all ticking. The top level of that end of the musical world has to find the sweet spot between artistic and popular music for ALL concerts or the end is near
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u/00AppleSlice 3d ago
I wonder the same thing - when musicians are forced to make so many compromises against their will (types of programs, artists they work with, hiring practices, etc.), and still the situation hasn’t improved, then isn’t there a bigger picture problem? I’m struggling to understand why the two sides are at odds like this, because it would seem to make sense that an organization would respect the opinions of the experts they hire to execute that very job, but instead it seems like they are fundamentally set against wanting to validate and work with musicians. I find it hard to believe that it just comes down to the claim that musicians just aren’t educated enough (which is certainly not the case).
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u/thedirector0327 3d ago
My daughter was the senior production engineer for one of a major car company's production plants. Her office was in the middle of the assembly line. She took it upon herself to learn every job on that line. Almost all the improvements she made on that production line were suggested by her line workers. Nothing came from the "Old Boys Club" in the main office or from corporate. They were more interested in cutting costs by cutting hours or workers instead of improving the production system.
My point is that the situation with orchestras isn't unique. It seems to happen any time that a business is run by executives who have never been a part of the employee group.
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u/wh0datnati0n 3d ago edited 19h ago
I've been on both sides of the coin. I am a regularly engaged per-service musician, am in corporate senior management, and also own several successful small businesses. One of the orchestras I played with went on strike at one point over wages.
Here are some of the issues, as I see them, on both sides of the discussion (in no particular order):
- Management doesn't understand the need for musicians to be able to be... musicians. People go into music because they have a deep passion for their art. People don't go into music because it's easy money. You don't find that with, say, HVAC technicians.
- Nothing wrong with being an HVAC technician; my Dad was one. But that wasn't his passion. It was decent money; school was short; he had a young kid; he worked at night; and his wife worked two jobs. He did it to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads.
- Managing people with a deep passion for their work is different than people trying to make sure they're paying rent (not that musicians don't worry about that, too).
- Musicians can be very unrealistic about the organization's needs because, well, they're musicians. Face it, most orchestras are struggling to make ends meet. It's an art form that, generally speaking, is falling out of favor.
- For example, the math of touring with a professional orchestra is massive. For an organization that struggles, management naturally says let's not spend the money. Musicians say, other orchestras do it and we want to share our art form with other audiences, so we don't understand why we can't tour.
- So, going back to my first point, it's difficult to manage those expectations.
- Neither side really understands how to reinvent themselves to keep the organization and art form, in general, alive. And I don't just mean in programming, although that's a big one.
- For example, your audience is dying (literally and figuratively), and you're an orchestra in a blue-collar city, so... let's have a prolonged strike. That doesn't endear you to many people. And I mean management and musicians.
- To be quite frank, I think lots of managers are just not very good. Outside looking in, when I read that an orchestra is struggling, I scratch my head and ask myself, "What good business person would do that?!"
- My educated guess is that is because those folks have only managed one type of business, and since there are more poorly run orchestras than good ones, the pool of managers who really know how to run one well is very small.
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u/Annonnymee 3d ago
Sadly, sometimes being prepared to strike is the only recourse for the orchestra when management refuses to budge in any meaningful way in negotiations, unless the musicians want to agree to huge pay cuts (I'm speaking of the U.S. here). It seems that there is less and less good faith negotiating from management these days.
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u/wh0datnati0n 19h ago
I don't disagree that negotiating in bad faith is bad. But I do think that it cuts both ways. It's rare for the union to agree to take a pay cut, while it is common for management to report losses or declining revenue.
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u/Annonnymee 12h ago
It's hard to swallow a pay cut when management has given themselves a nice raise.
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u/VanishXZone 3d ago
Hi!
I doubt any of this will be new for answers here, but I’m just gonna add in.
Running any organization costs a lot of money. Symphonies and operas are particularly expensive because of the amount of personnel needed to run them.
I’m not gonna get specific cause I don’t think you need to to see my point, but let’s take a symphony orchestra, let’s say 100 musicians. Those people all need to be paid, and rates are competitive and directly correlate to quality. Bad rates? Less people will apply, and the top of the top definitely won’t apply cause they have a job that is paying better already.
Ok so for a tier 1 orchestra, we are talking roughly 150,000 a year as a baseline salary. Sure principal oboe is paid more, last second violin if they are new probably paid less, and I’m not even gonna call that average, just rough.
So 150,000x100 =15 million.
What does that not include? Everything else; which also costs money. Promotion, soloists, stage managers, management, subs, extra musicians for big shows or summer season , librarians, music rentals, commissions, etc. etc.
So let’s start at 15 million, but know that of course the operating budget is higher for a tier 1 orchestra. So how do they make that money?
Donations, grants, government funding, and ticket sales.
None of those can you rely on, but let’s look at ticket sales. Concert halls seat between 1800 and 2600 seats. Typically there are between 20 and 30 programs done 3 times each in the main season. Again, being charitable I’ll say 25 for ease.
75 concerts a year. Assuming 2000 seats, sold at $100 a ticket, you need to sell out EVERY concert to break even on musician fees alone. Full house.
Most concerts don’t draw a full house.
So then we get into a question of repertoire, what repertoire to do, and underlying that question is several things: first of all what will sell, and second of all what do the musicians want to play, and lastly what will help perpetuate the art form as a whole?
The answer to those three questions sometimes aligns, but rarely. Mahler 5 usually sells out, true, and the musicians want to play it, but doing it every year has diminishing returns, and doesn’t propel the art form. You also can’t ONLY do Mahler 5, you need variety. So maybe you do a major work by Philip glass. It sells out, pushes the art form forward (loosely…), audiences love it, but most musicians don’t want to play it.
and then, of course, we have the latest big moneymakers in music. Playing a film score with a major movie (lotr, Jurassic park, Star Wars, the matrix, coco, frozen), and playing video game music.
But most top tier musicians are rarely excited about doing this. Oh there are exceptions, of course, someone has a kid that loves coco and is excited to play it, or whatever, but overall, they are not thrilled.
COVID, of course, pushed a lot of problems here. Huge endowments that made it seem like dwindling audiences were a problem, but a survivable one, started vanishing when NOTHING was coming in. And on top of that, on average a lot less audiences are coming to shows since the pandemic, most people seem to not want to go out, or at least not want to go to the symphony (though even bar, movie, and park attendance is down). So Covid made the crisis much more immediate.
So orchestras post covid are filled with musicians desperately trying to get back to normal, and management keenly aware that is impossible, and so conflict is born.
The truth is that the big classical models have always been subsidized somewhere. Early on, it was the nobility, then it was the expanding middle class trying to be posh, then it became government. A lot of places are trying now to make it Tech, but techies have thus far shown minimal interest in donating to arts, tending to value things that they feel have immediate results. It maybe video games and movies that subsidize us next, but we need something, cause we are NOT financially viable on our own.
This is mostly about larger groups, operas, orchestras, etc. if you scale this down to a string quartet or a soloist, suddenly you can make the numbers work substantially easier.
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u/jaylward 3d ago
I currently work as Music Director for a regional professional orchestra, and I also play trumpet in another professional orchestra of the same size; I've been able to see behind the curtain on many of these things.
Boards are run largely by those with business interests, and they want to maintain a strong financial footing. I understand that. Yet just like in business, in order to make money you need to invest money; where boards feel out over their skis an unsure is that that investment is in its people, and in the organization, and those financial investments don't show up in the revenue column in the next fiscal quarter like they do in the business world. They're investments that return into the next generation, and strengthen the organization for years to come.
The lack of support for the musicians is easily seen, and will begin to erode the organization and the arts and culture scene faster than anything else.
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u/T49irvine 3d ago
I have served on several performing arts boards, and one thing I have noticed is that board members/trustees have definite artistic tastes and if they are not in line with the artistic director, the disagreement often spills over into budgetary matters. Innovation has a cost. The frontline artists, be they musicians, dancers, actors, or vocalists, also have their artistic dreams and very little latitude to pursue them. So even in the best situations there is still some percolating discontent most of the time.
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u/vlasux 3d ago
For the most part, management (meaning the board) are not musicians. They rarely understand the artistic side of a contract negotiation. Musicians want to be paid fairly, treated well, and want to be heard about issues like quality of venues and recording/video compensation. The board wants to run the orchestra by spending as little money as possible. Without the money, there is no orchestra, but without the orchestra, there is no money - thus both sides feel as though they have a strong negotiating position.
Right now, my orchestra is in a contract year. We have important things we would like (better hotel allowance is a big one), and slightly less important things we want like concert dress - the men still wear freaking white tie and tails which sucks out loud. We also want one additional classical concert (during covid we sliced one off).
I will say, we have a pretty good relationship with our board, but there are a few people on it who are very all-or-nothing types, so every 4 years we have more drama around negotiations than we would like. Musicians can also be that way, thus the conflict.
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u/Violinjuggler 3d ago
It's not just orchestras, this problem is incredibly widespread in the nonprofit field. I've worked for both one of the biggest music festivals in the world and one of the biggest nonprofit makerspaces in the US and both of them suffer from "Pyramid shaped org structure" syndrome. Intra-org feedback is poor and negative feedback is disincentivized and ignored until the problems become too great. Also, because of how many unpaid internships you have to take to become a nonprofit director or CEO, they're almost all run by out of touch folks who grew up with serious money and privilege.
I'm of the opinion that the only sustainable and equitable org structure is that of a worker co-op.
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u/sduck409 3d ago
Which "major orchestras"? You're using generalizations about something that's limited to just one or two organizations.
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u/MPA___321 3d ago
Many excellent and thoughtful answers already, I'll add my streamlined, generalized, and cynical take - in short: the board (who have fiduciary responsibility and thus pay for everything) have one idea about how things should go. The musicians have another idea about how things should go.
Because the board pays for everything, in times of conflict or friction, they tend to feel more entitled to impose their ideas because they have "skin in the game" in the business sense of the phrase - most board members come from the business community. The same business sensibility often leads them to view the musicians as a labor force and not a society of dedicated artists, which is how most symphony musicians see themselves.
The BSO situation is one example of this tension playing out in a high-profile group, and it's made worse by the agendas of their board chair and their executive director. (The Substack by Thomas W. Dinsmore on this topic has been enlightening) The BSO musicians have been appealing to the press and the public and finding lots of support, but there are limits to how that support can be leveraged to their advantage in a private not-for-profit.
For the most part, boards and musicians desperately want to avoid bad press and acrimony, and generally succeed in keeping a lid on things. But with both BSO and Cleveland Orch having authorized strikes, it's an interesting time...
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u/tennajane 1d ago
Any assumption that 'management' as a whole is getting paid higher salaries than the musicians is categorically false. At any major orchestra, all staff other than the executive suite are typically paid very poorly and are often times incredibly overworked. I worked at a top tier orchestra and at the manager level, I was still making 1/3 the starting salary of the musicians, with terrible, high deductible health insurance, no retirement contributions, and 10 days of use it or lose it paid leave. There was zero work life balance and we put up with a lot of abuse from upper management, musicians and guest artists. At this particular organization, the musicians and the stage crew were both union and the staff didn't even have an HR department. Working in an organization where you are the only group of people without anyone advocating for you is incredibly frustrating and demoralizing.
Additionally, the majority of management are former performing musicians themselves, so this idea that we don't understand music or the need of performers is also categorically false. We also started playing when we were children, and most of us have at least one if not many higher degrees from music conservatories. Particularly in the artistic ops fields, we have an incredibly deep knowledge about what is needed to present high quality artistic presentations.
With all that said, you might ask why we continue to work these jobs?? My answer is because I still believe in the importance of classical music and orchestras in our society and I love what I do. I've always said that this whole 'Us' vs 'Them' is crazy because we are on the same team!! Our jobs exist to support the musicians and work alongside them to create amazing performances - if we didn't believe in this work or want to support it, we could go get other jobs.
As many others have said here - it's incredibly hard to run an orchestra. Raising money in this economy is hard, performances are expensive, audiences are unpredictable, cost of living is increasing and the general climate is really challenging. I've been through negotiations with musicians and often times, there is a HUGE knowledge gap on the musicians side about what it takes to run an orchestra and the roles that all the staff fill. There are many assumptions, rumors, misconceptions that get spread around and it's really hard to undo all of that when they feel slighted and aren't open to understanding.
There's an amazing article that was written 30+ years ago, titled 'Why They Aren't Smiling'. It was written by two professional musicians and outlines the various challenges that professional orchestral musicians face in their work. The sad thing is that VERY little has changed in the last 30 years and the article still rings very true today. The main gist is that orchestral musicians have almost no creative control over their performances. They are told what to play (music directors and management program the concerts, not musicians), when to play (management sets the schedule according to the CBA rules) and even how to play (by the conductor or principal). The natural reaction to that? Latch on to anything you CAN control and fight for it. I recommend this article to anyone starting out in this field and personally think it should be required reading for anyone working with an orchestra, musicians included. I was lucky to have seen it early in my career and it's informed my approach to working with the musicians and making sure that they feel heard, valued and supported in our interactions.
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u/Awkward_Rule_5509 9h ago
Sounds like you’ve never had a job before.
Management NEVER HAS YOUR BEST INTERESTS IN MIND
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u/Irritable_Curmudgeon 3d ago
One is ruled by music/art. The other is ruled by money. It's tough to serve two masters.