[Dixielandjazz] Where are the musical jobs?

[Stephen G Barbone]

We jazzers are not alone in the diminishing musical work scene.  
Consider the now struggling,  once flourishing free lance classical  
music scene in NYC as described below. This is a familiar story to us  
traddies. (article excerpted for brevity)

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband


Freelance Musicians Hear Mournful Coda as the Jobs Dry Up
NY TIMES - By DANIEL J. WAKIN - Dec 3, 2010


In New York’s classical-music world most of the attention falls on the  
big boys: the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the major  
international orchestras that pass throughCarnegie Hall, the glamorous  
soloists who can earn tens of thousands of dollars an appearance.

But night after night highly trained players traipse from Washington  
Heights or the Upper West Side or northern New Jersey or Long Island  
to play church jobs and weddings, Lincoln Center and Broadway summer  
festivals and fill-in jobs at the Met and the Philharmonic. . . .

It was a good living. But the New York freelance musician — a bright  
thread in the fabric of the city — is dying out. In an age of  
sampling, digitization and outsourcing, New York’s soundtrack and  
advertising-jingle recording industry has essentially collapsed.  
Broadway jobs are in decline. Dance companies rely increasingly on  
recorded music. And many freelance orchestras, among the last steady  
deals, are cutting back on their seasons, sometimes to  
nothingness. . . .

“This is first time that there are quite a few managements coming to  
us and saying, ‘We just don’t have money,’ ” said Eugene Moye Jr., a  
veteran cellist who serves on the players committees in several  
orchestras. “Our community is under a lot of pressure. Our jobs are  
melting away. We have a lot of people who are right on the edge.”

The Brooklyn Philharmonic, founded in 1954, has essentially stopped  
performing as an orchestra. The Long Island Philharmonic has only one  
concert scheduled this season — a Broadway medley — because of  
financial problems, although it is continuing its education programs.  
The Opera Orchestra of New York, which canceled its season last year,  
has come back with two concerts this year.  . . . The American  
Symphony Orchestra has run $300,000 to $400,000 deficits a season for  
the last several years, with the gaps covered at the last minute by  
donors.

In the face of such problems the American Symphony is seeking a novel  
solution. It has proposed a contract that would provide a regular  
paycheck to its players in exchange for their commitment to play more  
concerts and the option to carry out nonperforming work, like  
teaching, coaching or benefit concerts.

“The freelance system as it now stands cannot support the musicians,  
especially with Broadway work drying up for them,” said Lynne  
Meloccaro, the ensemble’s executive director. Orchestra officials hope  
the arrangement will solidify the roster, improving quality and making  
the orchestra more attractive to donors.

“We want this to work,” said Mr. Moye, the chairman of the players  
committee. But he added, “We will not be made into a group of  
indentured servants.” . . .

Other freelance orchestras include the New York Pops, the Riverside  
Symphony, the Bronx Arts Ensemble and the Little Orchestra Society,  
along with the Mostly Mozart and American Ballet Theater orchestras.  
Some 520 musicians populate the rosters of freelance ensembles, said  
Jay Blumenthal, the official in charge of freelance contracts for  
Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. Mr. Blumenthal said  
the orchestra musicians generally earn $252 a performance, and $50 an  
hour for rehearsal.

Clay Ruede, 55, typified the freelance life that once was. ... He  
played his last Broadway show, “The Color Purple,” in February 2008.  
He hasn’t recorded a movie soundtrack in eight years. With his income  
down from six figures to about $30,000 this year, Mr. Ruede  
(pronounced REE-dee) has sold his spare cello and bow, put a playlist  
from a gig with Bjork on eBay and plans to short-sell his house in  
Englewood, N.J., to make ends meet. . . . “The last three years I’ve  
just been barely making it,” he said. “I’ve done stuff I haven’t done  
since I was a teenager: playing weddings for cash, cocktail parties,  
things I never would have deigned to do. But you do what you have to.”  
His next steady engagement is not until March.

Many musicians cite another sort of recession behind the dwindling  
opportunities: the Classical Music Recession. That is, the decreasing  
profile of the art form amid modern entertainment-saturated life.  
Benjamin Herman, 61, a veteran percussionist with vast experience as a  
freelancer, maintains that the P. D. Q. Bach concerts of the musical  
humorist Peter Schickele faded away not because the jokes weren’t  
funny but because audiences didn’t have enough musical knowledge to  
get them. While still getting by on occasional weeks of frenzy, Mr.  
Herman has long stretches of quiet. . . .

The numbers reflect his story. At the Broadway theaters the total  
minimum number of musicians — decided by contract — has dropped to 335  
from 526 in the early 1990s, according to Local 802. (Theater closings  
contributed to the decline.) The increase in rock musicals has also  
cut into the traditional freelance market.

On the recording front many producers are taking their business to  
cheaper orchestras overseas or using digitized music, and major  
studios have closed their doors. Making $15,000 on a jingle was not  
unheard of 20 years ago. . .

Meanwhile the pool only grows. New York’s main conservatories — the  
Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music and Mannes College the  
New School — pump out more than 500 degree holders a year. And that is  
not to mention universities in the New York region and conservatories  
around the country that send their graduates to New York. . . .

A new breed of younger, social-media-savvy musicians is forming and  
running its own groups, often with innovative programming, concerts in  
unexpected places — bars, art galleries and museums — and minimal  
pay. . . .  “You do it yourself,” said Claire Chase, 32, a flutist who  
helped start and runs the International Contemporary Ensemble. “You  
don’t wait for people to discover you.” . . .

To make ends meet older freelancers are also trying to adapt. Dale  
Stuckenbruck, 57, of West Hempstead, N.Y., a violinist and freelance  
veteran who lacks enough union work to qualify for health insurance,  
has developed a specialty playing the musical saw and teaching music  
to youngsters, helping them make traditional Chinese violins and  
instruments out of vegetables. He has taken on more violin students  
and teaches at the C. W. Post campus of Long Island University and the  
Waldorf School in Garden City, N.Y.

“The modern artist has to be much more diversified,” he said. “You  
cannot play just Wieniawski or Chopin.”

His enthusiasm for playing the violin, he added, has not waned. “I do  
what I do 24 hours a day, and I love every second,” he said. “That’s  
what an artist is. We love it so deeply. We go with what it is. It’s  
not a job. It’s our life.”