[Dixielandjazz] Note to Randy Fendrick - Play Where The Money Is.

[Stephen G Barbone]

Hey Randy, and other accomplished musicians. Forget OKOM, this is  
where the money is <grin>

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestrteetjazzband

By DANIEL J. WAKIN - NY Times - July 6, 2010

Need a Job? Help Wanted at the N.Y. Philharmonic

The nation is bleeding jobs, unemployment stands at almost 10 percent,  
and lines run long at job fairs. But in one microscopic sliver of the  
economy, the pickings are rich: major orchestras.

Next season the New York Philharmonic will have a rare 12 openings, or  
roughly 12 percent of its instrumental work force, thanks to a  
confluence of retirements, departures for better jobs and long- 
unfilled positions. The Boston Symphony Orchestra has 10 vacancies,  
the Chicago Symphony Orchestra 9, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic 7.

Elsewhere the Cleveland Orchestra has four full-time job openings and  
one part-time. The Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, San  
Francisco Symphony and Dallas Symphony each have three openings.

“We haven’t had this many for quite a while, not for 20 years,” said  
Carl R. Schiebler, the New York Philharmonic’s personnel director and  
its maestro of musician management. “A lot is six or seven.”

In New York, Chicago and Los Angeles the many openings create unusual  
opportunities for new music directors to deepen their imprints on  
their orchestras. They also present, at least in the short term, the  
risk of subtly eroding the highly cultivated sense of ensemble and  
tradition of sound and style that exist in orchestras at their level.

The New York Philharmonic, the leader in Help Wanted signs, has  
openings for principal clarinetist, bass clarinetist and second  
flutist in the woodwinds; two sectionviolinists, two section cellists  
and three double bassists, including assistant principal; and  
associate principal horn player. In addition, the third horn player,  
Erik Ralske, who has been filling in as associate principal, has  
confirmed that he is fielding offers from elsewhere.

Not that audiences will be seeing empty chairs. Orchestras hire  
substitutes for section jobs. Assistant principals move up temporarily  
into the top positions.

“Nobody wants to see vacancies go unfilled,” said Zarin Mehta, the  
Philharmonic’s president, “and they will be filled, but we are  
fortunate that this is New York, and we have an awful lot of very good  
people out there.”

These posts, naturally, are rarefied and have little to do with the  
normal job picture nationwide. But the number of openings prompts the  
question of why so many spots stand vacant in a market glutted with  
talented musicians looking to move up to better orchestras or just to  
find jobs.

The economy has had an effect. It is cheaper to leave jobs unfilled  
and to pay substitutes, who usually receive close to the minimum base  
pay and fewer benefits. Starting salaries at the 10 top-paying  
orchestras next season range from $101,600 (Minnesota) to $136,500  
(Los Angeles), but principal players can earn two or three times that.

“It happens that you do save money,” Mr. Mehta acknowledged, but he  
said the lingering vacancies in New York were not cost-saving measures.

Sometimes orchestras negotiate with their unions to keep jobs open for  
financial reasons. In Chicago the players agreed to let four vacancies  
stand last season and next for budgetary reasons. At other times  
management does it informally, said Bruce Ridge, chairman of the  
International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians. He  
criticized the practice. “No business ever solved a financial problem  
by offering an inferior product to the public,” he said.

Music director transitions have also delayed hiring. Conductors on  
their way out often defer to their successors, who will, after all,  
have to live with the new musicians, and vice versa. Lorin Maazel,  
whose tenure in New York ended last year, left several openings to his  
successor, Alan Gilbert, who in his first season has already filled  
positions for two violinists, a trombonist, French horn player and, on  
June 25, a percussionist. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, where Gustavo  
Dudamel took over last season, provided the same explanation. Riccardo  
Muti begins his tenure in Chicago in September.

The elaborate logistical demands of orchestral auditions cause delays.  
First auditions are advertised. Then time must pass for applicants to  
send in résumés and tapes and practice the assigned excerpts from the  
orchestral literature. A committee of players, usually in the section,  
has to be formed, and preliminary rounds of auditions have to be  
scheduled. After the finalists are chosen, a time must be found when  
the busy music director and committee members can hear them. The  
process can easily stretch out for many months.

Often no winner is chosen. That happened last year with the  
Philharmonic’s principal clarinet job. Two rounds of auditions for  
associate principal horn player and a double bassist also produced no  
result. The music director in New York has final say but makes the  
decision in consultation with the committee.

The Boston Symphony usually has a high number of openings, because the  
demands on the players — the Tanglewood festival, the Boston Pops and  
regular concerts — make scheduling auditions especially difficult, as  
does the orchestra’s system of hiring based on a two-thirds majority  
in committee.

The finest musician can have a bad day: it’s a paradox of the process,  
in which less than an hour of playing is supposed to determine whether  
a musician is suitable for the continual day in, day out life of an  
orchestra member. And in another contradiction, the aspirants play  
alone for a job that depends on group effort. (Winners are usually on  
probation for a year or two, effectively a tryout with the ensemble.)  
On occasion, when no winner is chosen, established orchestral players  
from elsewhere will be invited to play as guests in a kind of informal  
tryout. It’s an imperfect system, but no one has figured out a better  
one.

Technical proficiency is only part of the test. Members of the  
orchestra weigh whether a candidate plays with strong character yet  
can blend, match the ensemble’s style and be a colleague they are  
willing to work with possibly for decades to come.

“The level of craft of students coming out of music school is as high  
as it’s ever been,” said Brant Taylor, a cellist in the Chicago  
Symphony. “I’m not sure the number of really great musicians out there  
— thinking, thoughtful musicians who are the whole package — has gone  
up in the 12 years I’ve been here.”

Orchestra officials and musicians are loath to discuss the auditioning  
process in detail, and screens are used to hide the auditioner’s  
identity from his judges, in the interest of fairness. In a statement,  
Mr. Gilbert said, “We’re looking for the best musicians, people with a  
human quality that makes them uniquely right for the New York  
Philharmonic.”

Sometimes the auditions lead to uncomfortable circumstances.

Mr. Ralske, the French horn player, joined the New York Philharmonic  
in 1993 in the third chair. He started filling in as associate  
principal several years ago, when the incumbent, Jerome A. Ashby, a  
close friend and beloved figure in the orchestra, became ill.

Mr. Ashby died in late 2007, a harsh blow to the orchestra. “Not a day  
goes by I don’t think about him,” said Mr. Ralske, who continued in  
the position. Last year the Philharmonic held auditions for the spot,  
and Mr. Ralske was the only finalist for a position he had handled  
well for years. Mr. Gilbert oversaw the audition.

Mr. Ralske did not get the job.

But things took a positive turn. Mr. Ralske said he had received not  
one but two job offers as principal horn player, a major step up. They  
came from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. Mr.  
Ralske, a Long Island native, said he was struggling with the  
decision: Los Angeles has an exciting new conductor in Mr. Dudamel and  
is in good financial shape, but “the Met is the Met,” and closer to  
home.

Rather than discuss his unsuccessful New York Philharmonic bid, Mr.  
Ralske said that his was a “success story.” It is also, he said, an  
illustration of “how deep the orchestra is in talent.”