What, exactly, is a “regional” orchestra? For the purposes of this article, regional orchestras will be defined as organizations that employ professional musicians but do not offer a salary and other benefits of full-time employment. The organizational structure is virtually identical to the full-time symphony orchestra and is quite different from the community orchestra. These orchestras usually (but not always) have a collective bargaining agreement through the American Federation of Musicians. When I reference regional orchestras, I am not necessarily referring to all orchestras in the AFM’s Regional Orchestra Players Association conference. One can be a regional orchestra according to this definition and not be in the ROPA conference (and vice-versa). For the purposes of this article, if an orchestra pays a salary, it belongs to the full-time orchestra category.

Many non-musicians are not aware of the difference between a community orchestra and a regional orchestra. Here are the differences between the three different kinds of orchestra:

Community Orchestra – Usually comprised of amateur musicians. There is generally either no pay involved or a small honorarium ($15-25 per service) to cover expenses for the musicians. The conductor of such an organization will typically be the only musician compensated. Players may be auditioned or may be picked to play with no audition at all. There is an understanding (or there should be!) that these players are doing it for the love of it and not as a living, and while they strive for an excellent performance, there is not the expectation of a completely polished product. It’s like being a good golfer versus being on the PGA Tour. These orchestras will sometimes hire professional players as principal players or as ‘ringers’ to fill out the section, and these players will be compensated at a more professional scale. The structure of these organizations is set up with the amateur in mind, with weekly rehearsals, community events, punch and cookies at the breaks, and a general church social kind of feeling to it.

Regional Orchestra – Comprised of professional musicians. The players in this level of orchestra are specialists in their instrument, usually having gone to music school and having demonstrated excellence on their instrument for a long period of time. Think of these orchestras as the minor leagues. There are lots of great players in the minor leagues, and they often move on to the major leagues. The organization of these orchestras usually falls under a collective bargaining agreement, and the bureaucracy of these organizations resembles that of a full-time professional orchestra. These orchestras can pay well per service, but they do not offer full-time employment.

Full-Time Orchestras – These jobs are careers unto themselves, and they have been the traditional employment objective for musicians interested in pursuing an orchestral performance career in the latter half of the 20^th century. These organizations provide musicians with a regular salary and benefits.

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I am currently a member of the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra and Elgin Symphony, two regional orchestras that also happen to be included in the American Federation of Musician’s Regional Orchestra Players Conference. Working in these two organizations has provided me with some insight into the benefits and challenges of regional orchestra employment.

My experience with regional orchestras has been that they provide the musician with steady employment and good pay for the week–but only for the week. The typical regional orchestra plays one concert cycle per month (two on a good month). Orchestras like the Elgin Symphony play three concerts per week, which results in a seven service week, while the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra will do four or more performances in a work week—not bad in either case for the freelance musician.

The compensation for regional orchestras can vary greatly, and it is not always commensurate with the quality of the orchestra. Some regional orchestras pay $375 per week, and some pay $1000 a week or more—it all depends on location, quality of the group, number of services, and other such factors.

Playing in a regional orchestra can, for the weeks in which one is employed, closely represent playing in a full-time orchestra in terms of working conditions, repertoire, and pay, and it can serve as a satisfactory option for musicians looking to pursue a career in orchestral playing.

The problem with this kind of work is that it typically only happens one week per month. Most people can’t pay their bills on one week of work per month, and musicians are no different. Regional orchestra musicians often audition for positions in several different regional orchestras to assemble a patchwork orchestral performance career.

Having a patchwork career can have pluses and minuses. In Part II of this series I wrote about how most full-time orchestral musicians are also freelancers to some extent, and in Part III I discussed how recent the phenomenon of full-time orchestral positions is historically. Many people enjoy the variety that comes with playing with different organizations, and they appreciate not having to depend on a single income stream (if you have a full-time orchestra job and it goes belly-up, you’re in a tight spot).

It is theoretically possible to hold several different regional orchestra jobs with 10 week seasons each and assemble a 38-40 week job out of them. I have come close to achieving this several times. In the last seven years, I was a member in or played significant portions of the season with the following regional orchestras:

1. Elgin Symphony
2. IRIS Chamber Orchestra
3. Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra
4. Lake Forest Symphony
5. Chicago Opera Theater
6. Chicago Philharmonic
7. Des Moines Metro Opera
8. Rockford Symphony
9. Illinois Symphony
10. Spoleto USA Festival
11. Racine Symphony
12. Waukesha Symphony
13. Present Music
14. Memphis Symphony
15. Northwest Indiana Symphony
16. Chicago Master Singers
17. Midsummers Music Festival
18. Music by the Lake
19. L’Opera Piccola

All of these organizations have a regional orchestra set-up in terms of compensation and schedule. I have played with full-time orchestras like the Lyric Opera of Chicago and community orchestras like the Northbrook Symphony and the Elmhurst Symphony, but these models differ from the regional orchestra model I am discussing here.

Although I currently hold four positions in these types of orchestra, in any given season I often perform with 8-10 regional orchestras on a regular or semi-regular basis. The reason I play with so many different groups can be summed up in one word:

Scheduling

Scheduling is the single biggest problem facing freelance musicians playing in regional orchestras. Along with the better working conditions associated with a regional orchestra job comes minimum service requirements. Most regional orchestras have some sort of policy requiring a musician to play anywhere between 50-95% of all offered services. Again, this figure can vary greatly depending on the particular organization, but there is usually some sort of minimum attendance requirement to remain a member of any regional orchestra.

This would not be a problem if orchestra schedules didn’t conflict with each other. One could hold three or four regional jobs and be working a respectable length season (albeit with no benefits) if the weeks of employment dovetailed with each other. The unfortunate reality is that orchestras tend to book similar weeks. Orchestras don’t usually do subscription concerts during Thanksgiving, Easter, and other holiday weeks, and many have a strange tendency to do concerts the very first week of the month. The result is that a musician who is a member of multiple regional orchestra has constant inter-orchestra conflicts.

As an example, let’s take a musician who is a member of three regional orchestras. Each of these orchestras has ten subscription weeks of work, which in an ideal world would total 30 weeks of work. This idealistic scenario would give the musician approximately eight months of work, which would resemble an ICSOM orchestra that had no summer season. The musician would still typically not have any benefits provided, but 30 weeks of work plus some teaching and other freelance work could easily make for a successful career.

The unfortunate reality is that at least ten of those weeks would conflict with each other, resulting in about 20 weeks of actual employment. Also, the minimum attendance requirements that many regional orchestras maintain begin to cause problems. These conflicting weeks mean that one has to sub out of one orchestra in order to play with the other ones, often putting the musician in the precarious position of being perpetually at the maximum number of allowed absences. This 1/3 reduction of work from the ideal three orchestra schedule not only reduces the musician’s income but locks those remaining 20 weeks down, often preventing the musician from taking any of those remaining weeks off for more lucrative subbing opportunities, auditions, and the like.

I currently hold four contracts with the aforementioned regional orchestras, and I am constantly in danger of being fired from all four of them due to scheduling conflicts. This means that when I get called to sub in a prestigious orchestra I have to weigh the dangers of being fired from my current tenured positions for the prospect of better, but more irregular (and not guaranteed) work.

For more about the complications of contractor/player relations, check out Road Warrior without an Expense Account Part VI – The Vicious Cycle.

Read the complete series:

• Part I – Adjunct University Teaching
• Part II – Realities of Professional Freelancing
• Part III – The Rise and Fall of the Full-Time Orchestra
• Part IV – Rising Tide, Shrinking Pool
• Part V – Regional Orchestras
• Part VI – The Vicious Cycle
• Part VII – Private Teaching
• Part VIII – Burnout
• Part IX – Rethinking Music Performance Degrees
• Part X – Refocusing (Musical Entrepreneurship)

Addendum I: The Real Cost of Driving to Gigs for the Freelance Musician
Addendum II: Tainting the Academic Waters with Pay-Per-Student Teaching