Discussion Panel: Page 22

The LSO is considered by London standards to be one of the better paid orchestras. The range is approximately £30-55k. Our salaries are about average compared with others but they are by no means high. Owning a house in central london is not possible on these salaries. Most of us own our own homes (in […]

If I am going to talk about standard of living/wage questions I have to start with a little information on Norway. I’m assuming that most of polyphonic.org’s readers don’t know too much about the country. I mean, why should they, it is only 4,500,000 people and doesn’t usually make a big splash in the news. […]

Response to Scorditura posting: I would say that the situation here is pretty stable although budgets cuts are something we have gone through and are still subject to. We are a municipal orchestra, employees of the city of Munich and subject to political decisions. A few years back, in the throes of the world-wide recession […]

Day 3 questions are about standard of living/quality of life. Specifically: Given that standard-of-living comparisons are notoriously hard to make, what kind of livelihood does your orchestra provide? What’s the typical living situation for your colleagues? (ie house, apartment (I’m assuming we can exclude tent and mansion)). What kinds of commutes do your colleagues have? […]

1) Orchestral workload. The NSZO is a full-time salaried orchestra, so I suppose this means it has a 52 week season, although it is not expressed in those terms. Calls for rehearsals and concerts last 2.5 hours and those for recordings 3 hours. We generally work for 25 hours a week (5 days x 5 […]

The LSO is a freelance, self-governed orchestra. Many of the London orchestras work on this basis and have since their inception. We work by letters of engagement with variable levels of commitment for the string players. I am presently on 50% commitment. We organise the rota amongst ourselves. The LSO works a 48-week season with […]

I have tried to compare our workload with that of other orchestras before and it isn’t so easy: how individual orchestras define “a service” and “maximum allowable” is one thing but what is a normal week? So forgive me if I get into details. The Oslo Philharmonic’s “maximum allowable” week is 25 hours of rehearsals/concerts. […]

In Sydney, the work year was rationed out not in weeks but in calls (performance, rehearsal, or meeting). The call ceiling for tutti players was 300 calls in 1 season, and 280 for titled players. If memory serves, the maximum number of calls allowed in 1 week was 9 (any combination of services). The touring […]

Our orchestra has a 52-week schedule. Paid vacation is officially 45 days (6 weeks + 3 “practice days”). The vacation is usually from mid-July until early September although the exact dates or even weeks can fluctuate. Usually the 6 weeks are in one block but management can break it up, which doesn’t happen too often. […]

For Day 2 of this discussion, I asked the panelists to answer the following questions: What’s your orchestra’s workload (weeks, number of services per week, tours, recordings, etc)? How secure is your job (individual job security, financial stability of orchestra)? How many non-nationals are in your orchestra?