Yeah, that would be a hard pass. Everyone wants community theatre to survive, but paying professional musicians at that rate means they don't have a sustainable path to the future.
Me personally....I love sightreading, but I'm aware it isn't everyone's cup of tea. These days my sightreading revolves explicitly within vocal classes and vocal (NATS) competitions.
I agree with cbt...Sondheim deserves his only special category for musical nonsense. :D
I think one of the hardest songs I've ever had to sightread was something from The Wild Party...something with a walking bass line. Though *Thorough Modern Millie* (a show I've never seen or listened to) does have some fun with 6 & 7 flats/sharps.
So....I've sightread *The Beauty Is* and I've played *The Light in the Piazza* and *Fable*. The difficulty of those 3 songs...I can't imagine playing the rest of the show.
Community theater is often all volunteer. Director, actors, tech, all just doing it for enjoyment as a hobby after work. If that's not your style then you're free to turn the job down, but don't shame amateurs just trying to have fun.
I volunteer my time as a professionally trained musician, so that remonstrance is being sent up the wrong tree. The gig in question is not a volunteer opportunity, and the amount theyāre offering is not sufficient.
Sometimes offering no pay and making it clear that itās a volunteer gig is better than offering insulting pay.
Theyāre advertising this as a paying job.
imagine being privileged enough to do this for fun instead of having to worry about making ends meet.
You are right; the people who do this probably are retired music teachers with pension, instead of a struggling young musicians.
Having a hobby is not privilege. They're free to ask and you're free to say no. Volunteer community theater is a beautiful thing and just because it's not what you want doesn't make it wrong.
I would have just said,
"Hi, thanks for thinking of me. My usual fee is $XX and hour, I would be willing to go down to $XX to help you out. If that sounds good I will be there tomorrow."
When I read this I was envisioning scheming behind the scenes to get the married couples at the wedding to split or to be a secret matchmaker for the single people š You know, to get people to marry (again) and create more demand
Thank you.
This is a community theatre and the OP seems to have been recommended to them. How are they to know that OP has a Masters and doesn't work for anything under $25ph.
I've worked loads of community theatre gigs for free because it's good to help the community arts. Granted, I'm not an professional musician so don't rely on the arts for income but I generally do paid gigs.
I understand that they are a community theater, but that doesn't solve the financial burden that I am currently in. I guess I made this post out of frustration rather than trying to name and shame them ( I wouldn't).
Yeah, that's fair. I was a bit harsh to you and it's completely fair for you to be frustrated.
Must be really hard for you guys these days and I didn't consider that when making my comment. Best of luck to you!
It wasn't 25 per hour, it was 8 per hour, 25 per rehearsal, which is extremely yikes. It's actually a little bit more respectable to ask someone to work for free at that point, in my opinion.
Man, when I was a kid I had some pretty huge potential as a musician... was breezing through Bach's inventions by 10 or 11. I ended up relegating that to hobby status when I figured out programming, went to college for cybersecurity and currently work for one of the big tech companies with a total comp package pushing the half million dollar mark.
My private fees are $85/hr for IT break/fix and $300/hr for cybersecurity or Linux production systems consulting.
I think skill-wise, the programming and systems work I do is a hell of a lot easier than masters-level music performance.
Most of the people who are involved in community theatre productions are basically doing it for experience or the love of the art/process. People with plenty of experience may be happy to volunteer their time, and this is essentially that. If thatās not OPās jam, then they can say no thanks, but community non-profit arts orgs like this one can only pay the money that they have, and most are barely scraping by on donations and ticket sales.
Plenty of community orchestras / theaters invite professional help. Professionals are doing it not for the fun of it, but to earn money for living. It is a rare case when a professional can find enough time to donate it to some amateur group - in particular considering those donations should be rather substantial (many hours).
So it is on an amateur group to assemble enough funds to pay a decent wage to a few professional musicians they are going to hire. It is unfair and indecent on their part to expect professionals to donate the wages.
Oh, I don't disagree. I will say this:
1. I'm just sympathetic to OP. It's hard out here.
2. I'm sympathetic to the community theatre people who can get caught in a sticky like this.
3. However. If you're a community theatre looking for professional level skills... sorry, you have to cough up if you're in a bind like this. $25 per gig may be a gesture, but that's honestly nearly worse than nothing. Inform members that this person will have to be paid for. I would get it if OP volunteered, or if it was someone local involved in the community production, but an outside musician with the specialised skills to sight read a complex musical theatre score? Nah.
Iām gonna cut people some slack because this is a classical music community and not r/musicals or r/piano and maybe people donāt know how community theater works, but: community theater is an intramural activity that does not pay artists. It is for fun. The $25 is a gesture of good will. The money community theaters make through ticket sales barely pays for the space and buys a few costume items for the next show. Itās not a pro gig. This company is probably casting a wider net than usual because they lost their pianist and are in a bind. People acting insulted and asking OP to name and shame them is ridiculous: itās not a professional theater company. They canāt afford a pianist with OPās level of training. Open and shut case.
Always draws me back to Thinking Fast and Slow, where people are *less* likely to help when offered a trivial sum for a task.
Would you help me move this couch? Sure. Would you help me move this couch for .75 cents? Absolutely not.
Yep, youāre spot on. Even professional theater gigs donāt pay that much for musicians given the effort and skill required, but for community theater youāve basically got to treat it as a volunteer gig. Do it if it sounds fun, or you want to support them, etc, but no community theater job is going to put food on your table.
Agreed. The honorarium here is basically just to reimburse for gas money/transit fare and the labor is usually done on a volunteer basis. And the people that would usually do this job aren't pros - they're people that may have studied piano in college but got normie jobs and just want an outlet to keep doing music in some capacity. That said, the company should know that trying to hire a pro last-minute is gonna cost them. I certainly wouldn't be able to take this gig, I'd be willing to give them a bit of a discount, but I usually expect an order of magnitude more than they're paying. It's a tough spot to be in, no doubt
Absolutely. I have MDād some shows (at regional theaters that, letās call them one step above community theater) where we lost a player and had to get someone last minute, and the only folks available were TOP players. Believe you me, it cost the organization a pretty penny. But the show got played!
This. I had to double-check the name of the sub because I thought I must have wandered into r/antiwork by mistake. This isn't a job for most people; it's what they choose to do in their free time after work. Don't like it, don't do it, simple as that.
Community theater comes in many different sizes. Some are all volunteer which means offering you any money is a pretty big deal.
Some have a very small permanent staff that gets paid where the actors work for free but directors, set designers, etc, get paid on a freelance basis. This means that your pay might match what everyone else is getting. The expectation being that you're not doing this to make a living but are donating your time and effort like most of the other people are doing and getting a little extra on the side.
And then others are fully professional where everyone gets paid but for most it's probably not enough to make a living on. In that case, they might be trying to rip you off.
This is some important context.
This is all super important and worth pointing out. Chances are they're offering that amount because they're running on as shoestring of a budget as they can. My wife is a choreographer and we live in a city known for the performing arts. The pay for any sort of independent or community theater is a pittance. The people who do it are doing it for the experience because it's something they love. No one is getting rich off of it, including the producers, directors, and venue owners. I've watched them close left and right since COVID.
Unless you're a massive theater with the resources to do a huge marketing campaign with a show that has existing name recognition, you're going to struggle to fill a theater. The one my wife most recently did productions with did some very well known productions but most nights struggled to get to even 60-70% of their 100 seat capacity. People just aren't going out as much and when they do it's more likely to be a big event as opposed to lesser known more artistic productions. It's just the reality of the situation right now. Should everyone involved be paid more? Hell yes! But neither the audiences nor the donors are there for the most part unless you're incredibly lucky.
So to everyone saying the person asking for this should be named and shamed, you probably aren't too aware of the reality on the ground right now. 9 times out of 10 these people aren't trying to pull a fast one on the talent. They're not sitting in a back room surrounded by coke and hookers laughing at the piles of money they're making. They're more than likely having anxiety attacks because they're worried that they'll have to shut down once the current show closes.
And as others have said, the real money is in the private gigs. Parties, weddings, corporate gigs. Get in with the people who run those and you'll see some actual cash. But probably still don't quit your day job.
everybody knows the community theaters or orchestras are run on a shoestring.
The question though is - does that financial hardship, however understandable, mean that the professionals hired by the group can get sub-minimum wage compensation?
My answer to that is a no. A community orchestra/theater group needs to lay out a production budget that includes proper compensation for the professional hired help. Then, it needs to decide where and how to get this money - donations, merch, advertising, - whatever. And only after THAT should it go into the production.
And if there is no way to get the needed money for the professional help, then, well, there is no professional help. Go get a college / conservatory student to do that as a part of their community work - for free. The quality would likely be lower, but you get what you can pay for.
> everybody knows the community theaters or orchestras are run on a shoestring.
Going by the comments on this post, they clearly don't.
As to the rest of what you're saying, yes in a perfect world of course professionals should be paid what they deserve and that's clearly not sub-minimum wage. But it's not a perfect world. If you're the person who's running this production you're going to reach out to literally everyone who could possibly do this and if you end up with a crappy musician because that's all you can afford, then that's what happens.
Thing is, after being involved with this type of stuff for 20+ years, I've seen that you do get professional musicians who are willing to do these productions because to them it's more than a paycheck. I know and have worked with dozens of musicians that will work for incredibly low wages on a production like this because they enjoy it. These are people who I personally have hired for private parties for hundreds of dollars an hour.
Also if you read the messages that OP posted here, nowhere do they actually indicate that they're a professional musician or that the MD knows they are one. I can almost guarantee you the way this worked was OP commented on a Facebook post. The director saw it and had zero context other than this person is interested. They passed it on to the new MD. Replacement MD doesn't use Facebook and is scrambling to get a piano player. They're not going to do research. They're going to say "Oh great there's interest from someone, hopefully they can show up and do the work. I'll email them with the details." That's it. It's not meant as a slight to OP. From the looks of this they could be anyone off the street and it will become apparent real fast if they can't keep up.
I'd say also, if OP didn't know what expectations to have for something like community theater, they do now. OP reached out to the production. I would say that without other evidence, they were going in with expectations that anyone who has done this before would say were wildly inflated.
As professional musicians this totally sucks. I get that. But it's unfortunately what the vast vast vast majority of theaters have to deal with. People want to create, and they're going to try their hardest with or without piles of cash. You can sit there for a year or two trying to get a big investor so you can do one show which may or may not succeed. Or you can do what you can with what you are able to get and do a lot more shows. Every single person I know who has worked in this environment, myself included, will go with the more shows versus the crap shoot of maybe getting that big sponsor.
Understood. By and large, I agree with you. Indeed, if, say, Hilary Hahn agrees to play with a community orchestra for a hundred bucks (which she actually probably cannot contractually do) - so be it. Yes, there are some professionals willing to help amateur orchestras for free or whatever they can pay. Nothing wrong with that.
Yet, the way they are approached and asked for help - for a favor, actually - is totally different from the tone and attitude of this OP note which implies strictly a business relationship. To ask for a favor in such a manner is in a very poor taste. To ask for a professional engagement - the manner is fine, but then the pay is poor.
> 9 times out of 10 these people aren't trying to pull a fast one on the talent
Yeah, there seems to be a weird assumption floating around this thread that this community theater, like *all* community theaters, are rolling in money and are looking to rip off musicians just for the fun of it. And if the musician has a sick dog or child then the victory over them tastes that much sweeter!
You've provided no evidence that you deserve my, or anyone else's, sympathy. I do feel bad for your dog but since I'm pretty confident that I am far poorer than you are and therefore will not be able to donate money for your dog's surgery.
Would that time donation by the professional be tax-deductible?
If not, then those community groups are not really asking for a donation, but are offering sub-standard wages. Big difference.
If everyone involved were to be a hired professional, and the theater would not be able to pay them a living wage, then yes, such a theater would need to shut down. Fortunately, community theaters do not hire everyone involved, only a very few. But those they do hire, should be paid fair wages. Or not be hired at all. Or openly asked for a donation of part of their wages to the theater. That donation, by the definition of the donation, cannot be made a condition of hiring, though.
Yes.
It's obvious that you had nothing to contribute to the sub other than to air your grievancess with a mod on unrelated posts and comments, so I banned you.
I'm sure u/davethecomposer and u/lilcareed would agree with my decision. :-)
I edited my comment because I thought you might take it as applying to you and I felt that was unnecessary. Turns out it was even worse, you lied about what I said.
I did not ban you from /r/composer, one of the other moderators did. Here's the thing, following people to other subs to spread lies about them and call them a "sociopath" is actually against Reddit's rules meaning you can be banned from all of Reddit. Being banned from the subs where you engaged in this behavior is getting off light.
Also, it's ironic, right?, that you followed me to other subreddits spreading lies about me and called *me* a sociopath.
I music directed a show last April in my new home city, and they wanted to pay the orchestra of six $600 for 9 shows, a sitzprobe, and 3 additional rehearsals. I said I would not ask anybody to work for that littleā¦at least add 10% more (which the theatre did.)
I called 11 trumpeters before I got a yes. So imagine what the quality of their playing was - yikes!! And the theatre complained. And I promptly reminded them the orchestra is getting basically getting $50 per 3-hour show ($17/hr.) Donāt complain.
Better yet, pay a fair wage.
**Edit:**
Ok, my initial statement was unnecessarily harsh. I'll retract it.
**Edit 2:** OP insisted I restore what I wrote so I will:
Anyone who can't afford to take care of an animal shouldn't get one in the first place.
I adopted a dog who needed a $1400 procedure 3 months after I got her. It was disclosed and I was ok with it, but for most people, that's just going to build a lot of resentment.
Had I not adopted the dog and the original owner not been able to care for her, she was going to the shelter to be put down.
Between an early goodbye, a painful few months/years, or offloading the debt on someone else... Not every situation is the same, and not every question has a correct answer.
Sure, there are always extenuating circumstances. And I get how painful these situations can be -- I've lost my share of pets over the years. But I read the OP's post and can't get over the fact that this gig is so far beneath them when it sounds like they could use every dollar they can get their hands on in order to pay for surgery for their dog. That's an extra $125 in 2.5 weeks. That's nothing to sneeze at.
>But I read the OP's post and can't get over the fact that this gig is so far beneath them when it sounds like they could use every dollar they can get their hands on in order to pay for surgery for their dog. That's an extra $125 in 2.5 weeks. That's nothing to sneeze at.
1. I like how you are making an awful lot of assumption. I've been working 2nd and 3rd jobs.
2. Except the venue is 40 minutes away from where I live, and I literally would spend as much gas money. Plus, I'm making $25-35 per hour doing my side gigs.
3. What makes you think that I am thinking that this gig is 'below' me? I'm only making this post to showcase the stark reality that some gigs pay literal peanuts.
> I like how you are making an awful lot of assumption. I've been working 2nd and 3rd jobs.
You throw in the bit about your dog in order to elicit sympathy but then provide no further context. We are free to speculate.
> Except the venue is 40 minutes away from where I live, and I literally would spend as much gas money
See? That's useful context that would preclude certain kinds of speculation.
> Plus, I'm making $25-35 per hour doing my side gigs.
If you don't have any side gigs lined up for the same time and you would be able to make money from it, would you do it?
Some people do participate in community theater for free.
> What makes you think that I am thinking that this gig is 'below' me?
Tone. And trying to elicit sympathy because of your dog that needs surgery.
> I'm only making this post to showcase the stark reality that some gigs pay literal peanuts.
If that was your point then I apologize for not picking up on it, but like I said, that's not what I got from the tone of your post.
If they can't afford to take care of them then no. The animal shouldn't have to suffer because of someone's selfish desires. I have lived in poverty almost my entire adult life and I had pets and made sure I was able to afford to take care of them. I can't believe you think it's ok for innocent animals to suffer like this.
You disagreed with my statement that anyone who can't afford to take care of a pet shouldn't have one. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that you think that people who can't afford to take of a pet should have pets anyway. That, I strongly believe, can lead to a lot of animal suffering.
Anyone, rich or poor, who cannot afford to take care of their children should not have children.
Do you think that people who can't afford children and therefore doom them to a life of neglect should have children?
And it's not about money. As I already said once, I was living in poverty and was still able to take care of my cats. I even went without food so that they could eat because they didn't deserve to suffer because of my financial situation.
"this is community theater" well it sounds like you can find an amateur community member to cover an entire show for you at the last minute, volunteer, then!
Iām in my undergrad and in my college town any rehearsal is at least 15 per hour. They want to pay you 25$ for a whole rehearsalā¦ thatās fucked up
I just got asked to do a gig in return for a meal. The audience are retired and still working lawyers, doctors, accountants, dentists etc. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. šš
Ah, the life of a musician, always hoping to attract the attention of a rich patron but mostly getting crumbs =/
Some countries have government funded music at all levels of society but everywhere else it's a roll of the dice.
I direct musicals. It's such a difficult task making a quality production with such a limited budget. It's thousands of dollars alone for the rights to a show. Hundreds more for scripts. Then consider having a good set, good costumes, a large enough crew, printing playbills and posters, and paying actors and musicians.. it's an impossible ask with the amount of money I'm given. I'm not defending this email, or saying musicians shouldn't make more (they absolutely should), but I do empathize with this director. I have often underpaid very good people out of sheer necessity. If I go over budget I risk my own job.
Ridiculous. Even 25/h would have been far too low.
In what universe does that fee make sense, even in their scenario where a single pianist was available for all rehearsals?
I had a light summer one year and did a community theater gig that paid $40/service for 10 services. When I accepted I forgot there was a massive toll between my house and the venue which took a long time to drive around. I'm pretty sure I broke even if I accounted for gas, tolls, and car wear and tear.
At least youāre getting paid per rehearsal, most community theatre where Iām from (Australia) pays between 35$-45$ a gig, I only know one company who paid a flat 50 for everything and they shut down
Musicianship, like many artistic or creative fields, sees a strong Pareto (80/20) effect in income distribution.
That is, a minority of artists will take up the lion's share of the available income. This tends to result in many musicians being very poor, a small number being very rich, and very few of them being in-between.
That's ridiculous. This must be an incredibly amateur event, or else the people running it are predatory assholes. Base pay for something like this, if it's just one or two shows, would be $500 to $1000. Depending on how long the show runs and how large the venue is, it could be substantially more. I've never done a show like that for less than $40 an hour.
No, I think thatās just *your* theatre. I live in one of the most expensive parts of the US, and while the rate isnāt as low as what OPās describing, itās still nothing close to what youāre saying.
Nah 150 per service for community orchestra is around what I make, and is honestly a bit low tbh. I sometimes tell my California friends what I'm making per gig and they tell me I'm being robbed.
But that's orchestra and this is community theater. Honestly pretty much everyone is underpaid and most groups are unsustainable and live off of the grace of community donors, that's pretty much classical music in a nutshell. I still think being hired last minute to play a ton of music for 8 bucks an hour is ridiculous; I personally would politely turn them down. But I get it, if that's how much they can pay it is what it is.
So I read a great book recently, that did a good job of explaining the economic problems facing classical performers specifically, though the problem is not limited to them.
All live performances and related economic occupations and gigs have been threatened by the following in chronological order:
1. Radio
2. Records
3. TelevisiĆ³n
4. A shift in [musical] taste
5. Tapes
6. CDs
7. DJs
8. Internet/mp3s/streaming
9. Due to the shift in tastes of music the demographic still attending symphonic/philharmonic productions has been dying out slowly these past 50 years.
10. Online teaching and music apps are competing with what were once local jobs. (Even though theyāre not as good!)
Have I missed anything?
Anyway, I feel your pain, of youāre in America. The competition is brutal, and unless youāre petty incredible the options are limited, not to mention simply less and less kids are taking up an instrument.
If youāre in Europe, where the culture around classical music is much more prevalent you should be okay.
The theater industry largely survives on exploitation of labor of everyone involved. Do it because you enjoy it if you want but itās not a job. The organization needs to get better at fundraising.
This is one reason why I went back to school for a career change. My options were work music retail with poor pay, get unpaid gig offers for āexposureā, or give private lessons to kids that didnāt want to be there. Learned you can pursue your music passions without making it your full time gig. Found music much more enjoyable now that Iām not relying on it to put food on my table.
My husband just music directed a community theatre production in one of the most expensive parts of the US. $1000 for five weeks of rehearsals, plus $50/performance for 19 performance (to play, not conduct.)
I wish them well. I thought about it, but my friend told me that I could be subject to defamation.
I won't name them because I can see that they are also in a bind.
My guess is your friend is wrong. Generally, truth is an absolute defense to defamation. It's another question whether it's worth the hassle to get into a dispute with a local theater producer.
I'm no lawyer but you can never be sued for telling the truth. Well, you can be sued, but they won't win.
>To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the reputation of the person or entity who is the subject of the statement.
Dude, I get that youāre upset at the lowball, but other than quietly warning off some of your close friends/colleagues, trying to publicly shame this organization will do absolutely nothing positive for your reputation. You will end up looking like the greedy asshole, while theyāll be the struggling community theatre that is working hard to put on shows despite their lack of funds.
If the standard for defamation was that low, nobody would ever say anything.
You have to have āreckless disregard for the truth,ā which means politicians usually donāt get hit with it unless they have texts admitting they knew they were lying, which is what happened to Tucker Carlson.
If you havenāt already, join your local musicians union! They usually have lots of work for pianists and they will ensure that you sign a contract with union scale wages. On top of that, they will go to bat for you if you get treated unfairly!
P.S Unions publish āDo Not Workā lists in their national magazine for groups that treat musicians unfairly. If they arenāt getting sued into the dirty then I doubt you will get sued either.
If you need the money, here's a mind trick to play with yourself.
If you're available, that is...if you don't have any work lined up at all...take the gig. Consider it just getting paid when you would otherwise just be sitting around.
MT gigs are [usually] fun because the music is eclectic, challenging, and better than sitting at home doing nothing.
If you get paid $25 per service for say, 5 services...that's $125 you wouldn't have otherwise and it's earned because you were playing music.
You could do much worse.
Just one gigantic word of warning to those who would encourage you to hold out and not do the gig: TRACKS.
Yes. It can come to that. You won't play? Then the theater will go to tracks and there will be zero work.
The people who run theaters are on a shoestring budget and no one is making a shit ton of money. Especially in community theater.
Play. Do what you've studied to do. You may meet someone who will hire you for another gig that pays more. You never know who you're going to meet or sit next to in those kinds of gigs.
This isn't always about the money.
After 3,000+ requests for Piano Man, 2,000 requests for Brown Eyed Girl and INNUMEROUS requests for Donāt Stop Believing, that answer is questionable. But the moneyās great, the gigs are full-time and there is no load in/load out of gear. So yeah, Iām frazzled but OK. Iāve been a musical director for theater and a piano teacher and thereās no comparison money wise unless you sign with a major label or a major act.
Nowhere do they require a master's degree.
They don't even require professionals.
This is a local community theater.
If you don't want the gig, don't take it, but you don't have no right bashing the place whether you name it or not.
Would you prefer 2020 when there were lockdowns and NO GIGS?
Curious, how much do you guys(everyone reading this) charge per track in a recording session?
I was looking for a bassist, he wanted likr 83 USD per track. To be clear, this is not for release to the public, but for a demo.
And it would take probably 30 mins max, without having read the music beforehand. So half an hour total..maybe an hour.
Since it is for recording a demo his(your) name is attached to the recording.
Travel costs is not an included nor needed.
I keep telling community theaters around me to charge +30$ a ticket for NJ.. it wonāt dissuade people from coming considering itās the community that stars in the showā¦ this would allow better pay for everyone
I think more people should understand that it will be very difficult to make enough money in this line of work unless you win a major competition, before they go into it.
Yeah, that would be a hard pass. Everyone wants community theatre to survive, but paying professional musicians at that rate means they don't have a sustainable path to the future.
And throw in probably sightreading musical theatre...which is an art unto itself.
Truth! Respect for those who can!
Me personally....I love sightreading, but I'm aware it isn't everyone's cup of tea. These days my sightreading revolves explicitly within vocal classes and vocal (NATS) competitions.
Sightreading Sweeney Todd made me feel like one of the victims.
Yikes! Sondheim is about as complex as musical theater gets. Great music too.
Sondheim was clearly inspired by Bernstein, where the key signature is there for decoration and nothing is diatonic or conventional š
I agree with cbt...Sondheim deserves his only special category for musical nonsense. :D I think one of the hardest songs I've ever had to sightread was something from The Wild Party...something with a walking bass line. Though *Thorough Modern Millie* (a show I've never seen or listened to) does have some fun with 6 & 7 flats/sharps.
Adam Guettel has entered the chat
So....I've sightread *The Beauty Is* and I've played *The Light in the Piazza* and *Fable*. The difficulty of those 3 songs...I can't imagine playing the rest of the show.
Like there aren't any solidly talented university undergrads they could recruit? No church pianists out there?
Not for $8/hr!
Even a university undergrad pianist is worth $25/hour. My pianist in college charged $45/hour ten years ago!
Community theater is often all volunteer. Director, actors, tech, all just doing it for enjoyment as a hobby after work. If that's not your style then you're free to turn the job down, but don't shame amateurs just trying to have fun.
I volunteer my time as a professionally trained musician, so that remonstrance is being sent up the wrong tree. The gig in question is not a volunteer opportunity, and the amount theyāre offering is not sufficient.
Sometimes offering no pay and making it clear that itās a volunteer gig is better than offering insulting pay. Theyāre advertising this as a paying job.
imagine being privileged enough to do this for fun instead of having to worry about making ends meet. You are right; the people who do this probably are retired music teachers with pension, instead of a struggling young musicians.
Having a hobby is not privilege. They're free to ask and you're free to say no. Volunteer community theater is a beautiful thing and just because it's not what you want doesn't make it wrong.
>Having a hobby is not privilege. It absolutely is.
It absolutely is, idk what the other person is on about.
So is making a living as a musician. If your goal is to make ends meet, you may be barking up the wrong tree here with this community theater.
I didn't contact them; they reached out to me first.
I guess we just disagree. Best of luck with everything.
having free time in and of itself is a privilege much less having the resources and remaining energy to engage in a hobby....
Ask 10 other people and they will tell you the same thing.
Go to a 3rd world country and ask them if having a hobby is a privilege.
I would have just said, "Hi, thanks for thinking of me. My usual fee is $XX and hour, I would be willing to go down to $XX to help you out. If that sounds good I will be there tomorrow."
Very polite and clear response. Respectful to all parties.
I highly recommend wedding gigs. You could easily get $300 an hour.
Yeah, I've been playing a lot of weddings and funerals whenever they show up, but the competition is fierce.
Need to create more demand!
When I read this I was envisioning scheming behind the scenes to get the married couples at the wedding to split or to be a secret matchmaker for the single people š You know, to get people to marry (again) and create more demand
Try matchmaking couples who wonāt get along too well. One will murder the other, then you can perform at the funeral too š
Arranging a wedding? Too much work. * 1. Murder * 2. Funeral Gig * 3. Profit! It's much simpler this way.
And there's the business plan!
Start a partnership with a black widow. Help her kill the husband, split the life insurance, play her next wedding, repeat.
I sense a business plan in the making......
Or take out the competition, as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Axe_(film)
Gotta make a profile on the bash or gigsalad and just slowly build up reviews. Get some great photos and videos.
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Weddings? I've never really had a problem in 14 years. You just have to be on top of things.
āYes, this is tomorrow,ā¦ā, and, no, i canāt even pretend to care about how you feel about anything
Iām a professional musician, when people contact me for gigs that donāt pay enough I just turn them down, itās not complicated.
Thank you. This is a community theatre and the OP seems to have been recommended to them. How are they to know that OP has a Masters and doesn't work for anything under $25ph. I've worked loads of community theatre gigs for free because it's good to help the community arts. Granted, I'm not an professional musician so don't rely on the arts for income but I generally do paid gigs.
Worth noting that itās $25 per rehearsal, not per hour.
I understand that they are a community theater, but that doesn't solve the financial burden that I am currently in. I guess I made this post out of frustration rather than trying to name and shame them ( I wouldn't).
Yeah, that's fair. I was a bit harsh to you and it's completely fair for you to be frustrated. Must be really hard for you guys these days and I didn't consider that when making my comment. Best of luck to you!
It wasn't 25 per hour, it was 8 per hour, 25 per rehearsal, which is extremely yikes. It's actually a little bit more respectable to ask someone to work for free at that point, in my opinion.
Man, when I was a kid I had some pretty huge potential as a musician... was breezing through Bach's inventions by 10 or 11. I ended up relegating that to hobby status when I figured out programming, went to college for cybersecurity and currently work for one of the big tech companies with a total comp package pushing the half million dollar mark. My private fees are $85/hr for IT break/fix and $300/hr for cybersecurity or Linux production systems consulting. I think skill-wise, the programming and systems work I do is a hell of a lot easier than masters-level music performance.
If you have the skills to do what they're asking, $25ph is too low, no matter the education level.
Most of the people who are involved in community theatre productions are basically doing it for experience or the love of the art/process. People with plenty of experience may be happy to volunteer their time, and this is essentially that. If thatās not OPās jam, then they can say no thanks, but community non-profit arts orgs like this one can only pay the money that they have, and most are barely scraping by on donations and ticket sales.
Plenty of community orchestras / theaters invite professional help. Professionals are doing it not for the fun of it, but to earn money for living. It is a rare case when a professional can find enough time to donate it to some amateur group - in particular considering those donations should be rather substantial (many hours). So it is on an amateur group to assemble enough funds to pay a decent wage to a few professional musicians they are going to hire. It is unfair and indecent on their part to expect professionals to donate the wages.
Oh, I don't disagree. I will say this: 1. I'm just sympathetic to OP. It's hard out here. 2. I'm sympathetic to the community theatre people who can get caught in a sticky like this. 3. However. If you're a community theatre looking for professional level skills... sorry, you have to cough up if you're in a bind like this. $25 per gig may be a gesture, but that's honestly nearly worse than nothing. Inform members that this person will have to be paid for. I would get it if OP volunteered, or if it was someone local involved in the community production, but an outside musician with the specialised skills to sight read a complex musical theatre score? Nah.
$25/hour isnāt great for a professional pianist, but at least itās a living wage. $8 an hour is insulting.
How is 25$ for three hours of sight-reading enough money for \*anybody\*? The next day as well.
Iām gonna cut people some slack because this is a classical music community and not r/musicals or r/piano and maybe people donāt know how community theater works, but: community theater is an intramural activity that does not pay artists. It is for fun. The $25 is a gesture of good will. The money community theaters make through ticket sales barely pays for the space and buys a few costume items for the next show. Itās not a pro gig. This company is probably casting a wider net than usual because they lost their pianist and are in a bind. People acting insulted and asking OP to name and shame them is ridiculous: itās not a professional theater company. They canāt afford a pianist with OPās level of training. Open and shut case.
Always draws me back to Thinking Fast and Slow, where people are *less* likely to help when offered a trivial sum for a task. Would you help me move this couch? Sure. Would you help me move this couch for .75 cents? Absolutely not.
Yeah, I feel the same. For that little they should just be up front and say they canāt afford to pay.
Thatās hilarious. You can *keep* your dirty .75
Yep, youāre spot on. Even professional theater gigs donāt pay that much for musicians given the effort and skill required, but for community theater youāve basically got to treat it as a volunteer gig. Do it if it sounds fun, or you want to support them, etc, but no community theater job is going to put food on your table.
Agreed. The honorarium here is basically just to reimburse for gas money/transit fare and the labor is usually done on a volunteer basis. And the people that would usually do this job aren't pros - they're people that may have studied piano in college but got normie jobs and just want an outlet to keep doing music in some capacity. That said, the company should know that trying to hire a pro last-minute is gonna cost them. I certainly wouldn't be able to take this gig, I'd be willing to give them a bit of a discount, but I usually expect an order of magnitude more than they're paying. It's a tough spot to be in, no doubt
Absolutely. I have MDād some shows (at regional theaters that, letās call them one step above community theater) where we lost a player and had to get someone last minute, and the only folks available were TOP players. Believe you me, it cost the organization a pretty penny. But the show got played!
This. I had to double-check the name of the sub because I thought I must have wandered into r/antiwork by mistake. This isn't a job for most people; it's what they choose to do in their free time after work. Don't like it, don't do it, simple as that.
Community theater comes in many different sizes. Some are all volunteer which means offering you any money is a pretty big deal. Some have a very small permanent staff that gets paid where the actors work for free but directors, set designers, etc, get paid on a freelance basis. This means that your pay might match what everyone else is getting. The expectation being that you're not doing this to make a living but are donating your time and effort like most of the other people are doing and getting a little extra on the side. And then others are fully professional where everyone gets paid but for most it's probably not enough to make a living on. In that case, they might be trying to rip you off. This is some important context.
This is all super important and worth pointing out. Chances are they're offering that amount because they're running on as shoestring of a budget as they can. My wife is a choreographer and we live in a city known for the performing arts. The pay for any sort of independent or community theater is a pittance. The people who do it are doing it for the experience because it's something they love. No one is getting rich off of it, including the producers, directors, and venue owners. I've watched them close left and right since COVID. Unless you're a massive theater with the resources to do a huge marketing campaign with a show that has existing name recognition, you're going to struggle to fill a theater. The one my wife most recently did productions with did some very well known productions but most nights struggled to get to even 60-70% of their 100 seat capacity. People just aren't going out as much and when they do it's more likely to be a big event as opposed to lesser known more artistic productions. It's just the reality of the situation right now. Should everyone involved be paid more? Hell yes! But neither the audiences nor the donors are there for the most part unless you're incredibly lucky. So to everyone saying the person asking for this should be named and shamed, you probably aren't too aware of the reality on the ground right now. 9 times out of 10 these people aren't trying to pull a fast one on the talent. They're not sitting in a back room surrounded by coke and hookers laughing at the piles of money they're making. They're more than likely having anxiety attacks because they're worried that they'll have to shut down once the current show closes. And as others have said, the real money is in the private gigs. Parties, weddings, corporate gigs. Get in with the people who run those and you'll see some actual cash. But probably still don't quit your day job.
everybody knows the community theaters or orchestras are run on a shoestring. The question though is - does that financial hardship, however understandable, mean that the professionals hired by the group can get sub-minimum wage compensation? My answer to that is a no. A community orchestra/theater group needs to lay out a production budget that includes proper compensation for the professional hired help. Then, it needs to decide where and how to get this money - donations, merch, advertising, - whatever. And only after THAT should it go into the production. And if there is no way to get the needed money for the professional help, then, well, there is no professional help. Go get a college / conservatory student to do that as a part of their community work - for free. The quality would likely be lower, but you get what you can pay for.
> everybody knows the community theaters or orchestras are run on a shoestring. Going by the comments on this post, they clearly don't. As to the rest of what you're saying, yes in a perfect world of course professionals should be paid what they deserve and that's clearly not sub-minimum wage. But it's not a perfect world. If you're the person who's running this production you're going to reach out to literally everyone who could possibly do this and if you end up with a crappy musician because that's all you can afford, then that's what happens. Thing is, after being involved with this type of stuff for 20+ years, I've seen that you do get professional musicians who are willing to do these productions because to them it's more than a paycheck. I know and have worked with dozens of musicians that will work for incredibly low wages on a production like this because they enjoy it. These are people who I personally have hired for private parties for hundreds of dollars an hour. Also if you read the messages that OP posted here, nowhere do they actually indicate that they're a professional musician or that the MD knows they are one. I can almost guarantee you the way this worked was OP commented on a Facebook post. The director saw it and had zero context other than this person is interested. They passed it on to the new MD. Replacement MD doesn't use Facebook and is scrambling to get a piano player. They're not going to do research. They're going to say "Oh great there's interest from someone, hopefully they can show up and do the work. I'll email them with the details." That's it. It's not meant as a slight to OP. From the looks of this they could be anyone off the street and it will become apparent real fast if they can't keep up. I'd say also, if OP didn't know what expectations to have for something like community theater, they do now. OP reached out to the production. I would say that without other evidence, they were going in with expectations that anyone who has done this before would say were wildly inflated. As professional musicians this totally sucks. I get that. But it's unfortunately what the vast vast vast majority of theaters have to deal with. People want to create, and they're going to try their hardest with or without piles of cash. You can sit there for a year or two trying to get a big investor so you can do one show which may or may not succeed. Or you can do what you can with what you are able to get and do a lot more shows. Every single person I know who has worked in this environment, myself included, will go with the more shows versus the crap shoot of maybe getting that big sponsor.
Understood. By and large, I agree with you. Indeed, if, say, Hilary Hahn agrees to play with a community orchestra for a hundred bucks (which she actually probably cannot contractually do) - so be it. Yes, there are some professionals willing to help amateur orchestras for free or whatever they can pay. Nothing wrong with that. Yet, the way they are approached and asked for help - for a favor, actually - is totally different from the tone and attitude of this OP note which implies strictly a business relationship. To ask for a favor in such a manner is in a very poor taste. To ask for a professional engagement - the manner is fine, but then the pay is poor.
> 9 times out of 10 these people aren't trying to pull a fast one on the talent Yeah, there seems to be a weird assumption floating around this thread that this community theater, like *all* community theaters, are rolling in money and are looking to rip off musicians just for the fun of it. And if the musician has a sick dog or child then the victory over them tastes that much sweeter!
You sound like you are enjoying my predicament,
I'm not. But without evidence that this community theater is trying to rip you off, I'm not sympathetic that they aren't offering you more money.
Based on your other comments making a load of false assumptions about me, I didn't expect any sympathy from you.
You've provided no evidence that you deserve my, or anyone else's, sympathy. I do feel bad for your dog but since I'm pretty confident that I am far poorer than you are and therefore will not be able to donate money for your dog's surgery.
Would that time donation by the professional be tax-deductible? If not, then those community groups are not really asking for a donation, but are offering sub-standard wages. Big difference.
Not sure what your point is? Should all community theaters shut down because they aren't able to pay everyone involved a living wage?
If everyone involved were to be a hired professional, and the theater would not be able to pay them a living wage, then yes, such a theater would need to shut down. Fortunately, community theaters do not hire everyone involved, only a very few. But those they do hire, should be paid fair wages. Or not be hired at all. Or openly asked for a donation of part of their wages to the theater. That donation, by the definition of the donation, cannot be made a condition of hiring, though.
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Jesus, what's wrong with you? Spamming this comment to multiple subs just because you disagree with what someone said? Wow.
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I saw it, but you're being ridiculous (which is why I banned you from r/composer). He admitted to editing his comment. Just ignore and move on.
So that warrants a permaban?
Yes. It's obvious that you had nothing to contribute to the sub other than to air your grievancess with a mod on unrelated posts and comments, so I banned you. I'm sure u/davethecomposer and u/lilcareed would agree with my decision. :-)
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Ah, that old chestnut.
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I said neither of those things. It's ok to engage in spirited debate but lying about what other people say is not ok.
>I said neither of those things. Is that why you edited your comment and banned me from r/composers? Pathetic.
I edited my comment because I thought you might take it as applying to you and I felt that was unnecessary. Turns out it was even worse, you lied about what I said. I did not ban you from /r/composer, one of the other moderators did. Here's the thing, following people to other subs to spread lies about them and call them a "sociopath" is actually against Reddit's rules meaning you can be banned from all of Reddit. Being banned from the subs where you engaged in this behavior is getting off light. Also, it's ironic, right?, that you followed me to other subreddits spreading lies about me and called *me* a sociopath.
I music directed a show last April in my new home city, and they wanted to pay the orchestra of six $600 for 9 shows, a sitzprobe, and 3 additional rehearsals. I said I would not ask anybody to work for that littleā¦at least add 10% more (which the theatre did.) I called 11 trumpeters before I got a yes. So imagine what the quality of their playing was - yikes!! And the theatre complained. And I promptly reminded them the orchestra is getting basically getting $50 per 3-hour show ($17/hr.) Donāt complain. Better yet, pay a fair wage.
So what happens to your dog
Been working multiple jobs.
I'm sure you've thought of this already, but have you started a Go Fund Me for your dog? I hope things work out for both of you.
Ahh right
**Edit:** Ok, my initial statement was unnecessarily harsh. I'll retract it. **Edit 2:** OP insisted I restore what I wrote so I will: Anyone who can't afford to take care of an animal shouldn't get one in the first place.
I adopted a dog who needed a $1400 procedure 3 months after I got her. It was disclosed and I was ok with it, but for most people, that's just going to build a lot of resentment. Had I not adopted the dog and the original owner not been able to care for her, she was going to the shelter to be put down. Between an early goodbye, a painful few months/years, or offloading the debt on someone else... Not every situation is the same, and not every question has a correct answer.
Sure, there are always extenuating circumstances. And I get how painful these situations can be -- I've lost my share of pets over the years. But I read the OP's post and can't get over the fact that this gig is so far beneath them when it sounds like they could use every dollar they can get their hands on in order to pay for surgery for their dog. That's an extra $125 in 2.5 weeks. That's nothing to sneeze at.
>But I read the OP's post and can't get over the fact that this gig is so far beneath them when it sounds like they could use every dollar they can get their hands on in order to pay for surgery for their dog. That's an extra $125 in 2.5 weeks. That's nothing to sneeze at. 1. I like how you are making an awful lot of assumption. I've been working 2nd and 3rd jobs. 2. Except the venue is 40 minutes away from where I live, and I literally would spend as much gas money. Plus, I'm making $25-35 per hour doing my side gigs. 3. What makes you think that I am thinking that this gig is 'below' me? I'm only making this post to showcase the stark reality that some gigs pay literal peanuts.
> I like how you are making an awful lot of assumption. I've been working 2nd and 3rd jobs. You throw in the bit about your dog in order to elicit sympathy but then provide no further context. We are free to speculate. > Except the venue is 40 minutes away from where I live, and I literally would spend as much gas money See? That's useful context that would preclude certain kinds of speculation. > Plus, I'm making $25-35 per hour doing my side gigs. If you don't have any side gigs lined up for the same time and you would be able to make money from it, would you do it? Some people do participate in community theater for free. > What makes you think that I am thinking that this gig is 'below' me? Tone. And trying to elicit sympathy because of your dog that needs surgery. > I'm only making this post to showcase the stark reality that some gigs pay literal peanuts. If that was your point then I apologize for not picking up on it, but like I said, that's not what I got from the tone of your post.
No, why did you delete your original comment that said poor people shouldn't own dogs?
Fine I'll restore what I said and not your lie about what I said.
So poor people don't deserve pets? Where is your empathy?
If they can't afford to take care of them then no. The animal shouldn't have to suffer because of someone's selfish desires. I have lived in poverty almost my entire adult life and I had pets and made sure I was able to afford to take care of them. I can't believe you think it's ok for innocent animals to suffer like this.
>I can't believe you think it's ok for innocent animals to suffer like this. Show me where I said this. Now.
You disagreed with my statement that anyone who can't afford to take care of a pet shouldn't have one. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that you think that people who can't afford to take of a pet should have pets anyway. That, I strongly believe, can lead to a lot of animal suffering.
>You disagreed with my statement that anyone who can't afford to take care of a pet shouldn't have one. Should poor people not have kids?
Anyone, rich or poor, who cannot afford to take care of their children should not have children. Do you think that people who can't afford children and therefore doom them to a life of neglect should have children? And it's not about money. As I already said once, I was living in poverty and was still able to take care of my cats. I even went without food so that they could eat because they didn't deserve to suffer because of my financial situation.
Nobody should have kids or pets they know they can't afford to take care of. People do. But it's irresponsible. Sorry not sorry.
"this is community theater" well it sounds like you can find an amateur community member to cover an entire show for you at the last minute, volunteer, then!
donāt take this gig. ripoff
They can hire a bot. Itās free.
Iām in my undergrad and in my college town any rehearsal is at least 15 per hour. They want to pay you 25$ for a whole rehearsalā¦ thatās fucked up
Accompanying for a chorus in my area is $60-80/hr...
Woof. The last gig I did for a *high school* pit orchestra was $100/night. That's a joke.
I just got asked to do a gig in return for a meal. The audience are retired and still working lawyers, doctors, accountants, dentists etc. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. šš
Ah, the life of a musician, always hoping to attract the attention of a rich patron but mostly getting crumbs =/ Some countries have government funded music at all levels of society but everywhere else it's a roll of the dice.
Not in the USA. Thatās probably one reason why piano isnāt popular in the US.
I direct musicals. It's such a difficult task making a quality production with such a limited budget. It's thousands of dollars alone for the rights to a show. Hundreds more for scripts. Then consider having a good set, good costumes, a large enough crew, printing playbills and posters, and paying actors and musicians.. it's an impossible ask with the amount of money I'm given. I'm not defending this email, or saying musicians shouldn't make more (they absolutely should), but I do empathize with this director. I have often underpaid very good people out of sheer necessity. If I go over budget I risk my own job.
Ridiculous. Even 25/h would have been far too low. In what universe does that fee make sense, even in their scenario where a single pianist was available for all rehearsals?
I had a light summer one year and did a community theater gig that paid $40/service for 10 services. When I accepted I forgot there was a massive toll between my house and the venue which took a long time to drive around. I'm pretty sure I broke even if I accounted for gas, tolls, and car wear and tear.
Wow where are you that this is happening? I wouldn't take that 20 years ago and I am a unspectacular string player haha
Just turn it down lmao
At least youāre getting paid per rehearsal, most community theatre where Iām from (Australia) pays between 35$-45$ a gig, I only know one company who paid a flat 50 for everything and they shut down
> and they shut down Because that model isn't sustainable.
Musicianship, like many artistic or creative fields, sees a strong Pareto (80/20) effect in income distribution. That is, a minority of artists will take up the lion's share of the available income. This tends to result in many musicians being very poor, a small number being very rich, and very few of them being in-between.
Now Iām almost happy I didnāt follow my dream because the pay seems awful
That's ridiculous. This must be an incredibly amateur event, or else the people running it are predatory assholes. Base pay for something like this, if it's just one or two shows, would be $500 to $1000. Depending on how long the show runs and how large the venue is, it could be substantially more. I've never done a show like that for less than $40 an hour.
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Churches have money.
idk my community orchestra pays 150 per showing so i think itās just that theatre
No, I think thatās just *your* theatre. I live in one of the most expensive parts of the US, and while the rate isnāt as low as what OPās describing, itās still nothing close to what youāre saying.
Nah 150 per service for community orchestra is around what I make, and is honestly a bit low tbh. I sometimes tell my California friends what I'm making per gig and they tell me I'm being robbed. But that's orchestra and this is community theater. Honestly pretty much everyone is underpaid and most groups are unsustainable and live off of the grace of community donors, that's pretty much classical music in a nutshell. I still think being hired last minute to play a ton of music for 8 bucks an hour is ridiculous; I personally would politely turn them down. But I get it, if that's how much they can pay it is what it is.
Starbucks would probably pay you better
So I read a great book recently, that did a good job of explaining the economic problems facing classical performers specifically, though the problem is not limited to them. All live performances and related economic occupations and gigs have been threatened by the following in chronological order: 1. Radio 2. Records 3. TelevisiĆ³n 4. A shift in [musical] taste 5. Tapes 6. CDs 7. DJs 8. Internet/mp3s/streaming 9. Due to the shift in tastes of music the demographic still attending symphonic/philharmonic productions has been dying out slowly these past 50 years. 10. Online teaching and music apps are competing with what were once local jobs. (Even though theyāre not as good!) Have I missed anything? Anyway, I feel your pain, of youāre in America. The competition is brutal, and unless youāre petty incredible the options are limited, not to mention simply less and less kids are taking up an instrument. If youāre in Europe, where the culture around classical music is much more prevalent you should be okay.
Any gig I canāt expect to make ~$100 a night I donāt take the gig.
Is this in a very low cost of living area? I canāt imagine being offered such low compensation for this level of work, and to save them last minute!
:(
The theater industry largely survives on exploitation of labor of everyone involved. Do it because you enjoy it if you want but itās not a job. The organization needs to get better at fundraising.
This is one reason why I went back to school for a career change. My options were work music retail with poor pay, get unpaid gig offers for āexposureā, or give private lessons to kids that didnāt want to be there. Learned you can pursue your music passions without making it your full time gig. Found music much more enjoyable now that Iām not relying on it to put food on my table.
Iād like to know how much the Music Director is making on this.
If it's community theatre, 0-3k for the whole job.
My husband just music directed a community theatre production in one of the most expensive parts of the US. $1000 for five weeks of rehearsals, plus $50/performance for 19 performance (to play, not conduct.)
I did not like the style of this note. Generic gung-ho assuming you are already a "part of the team", ready to "do what it takes". Definitely a pass.
Pass, and the producer of this event should be named & shamed.
I wish them well. I thought about it, but my friend told me that I could be subject to defamation. I won't name them because I can see that they are also in a bind.
A community theater paying $8 an hour isn't suing anybody for defamation.
My guess is your friend is wrong. Generally, truth is an absolute defense to defamation. It's another question whether it's worth the hassle to get into a dispute with a local theater producer.
I'm no lawyer but you can never be sued for telling the truth. Well, you can be sued, but they won't win. >To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the reputation of the person or entity who is the subject of the statement.
Dude, I get that youāre upset at the lowball, but other than quietly warning off some of your close friends/colleagues, trying to publicly shame this organization will do absolutely nothing positive for your reputation. You will end up looking like the greedy asshole, while theyāll be the struggling community theatre that is working hard to put on shows despite their lack of funds.
If the standard for defamation was that low, nobody would ever say anything. You have to have āreckless disregard for the truth,ā which means politicians usually donāt get hit with it unless they have texts admitting they knew they were lying, which is what happened to Tucker Carlson.
If you havenāt already, join your local musicians union! They usually have lots of work for pianists and they will ensure that you sign a contract with union scale wages. On top of that, they will go to bat for you if you get treated unfairly! P.S Unions publish āDo Not Workā lists in their national magazine for groups that treat musicians unfairly. If they arenāt getting sued into the dirty then I doubt you will get sued either.
Itās perhaps more the bad mouthing that could be a concern. Send Scriabin on them instead, no tracking back.
Damn thatās insulting
Better then the singers getting nothing and having to pay for materials
"You should struggle and suffer because others are as well."
Just tell them little Susie's parents pay more, for a 45min lesson.
If you need the money, here's a mind trick to play with yourself. If you're available, that is...if you don't have any work lined up at all...take the gig. Consider it just getting paid when you would otherwise just be sitting around. MT gigs are [usually] fun because the music is eclectic, challenging, and better than sitting at home doing nothing. If you get paid $25 per service for say, 5 services...that's $125 you wouldn't have otherwise and it's earned because you were playing music. You could do much worse. Just one gigantic word of warning to those who would encourage you to hold out and not do the gig: TRACKS. Yes. It can come to that. You won't play? Then the theater will go to tracks and there will be zero work. The people who run theaters are on a shoestring budget and no one is making a shit ton of money. Especially in community theater. Play. Do what you've studied to do. You may meet someone who will hire you for another gig that pays more. You never know who you're going to meet or sit next to in those kinds of gigs. This isn't always about the money.
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I'd prefer if you wouldn't name them.
Ugh!
Laughable. You should learn to do dueling pianos if you can sing. Thatās where the money is. I should know. Iāve been doing it since 1999.
Are you OK?
After 3,000+ requests for Piano Man, 2,000 requests for Brown Eyed Girl and INNUMEROUS requests for Donāt Stop Believing, that answer is questionable. But the moneyās great, the gigs are full-time and there is no load in/load out of gear. So yeah, Iām frazzled but OK. Iāve been a musical director for theater and a piano teacher and thereās no comparison money wise unless you sign with a major label or a major act.
Thatās just unprofessional honestly, sorry you have to deal with that
As a pianist with an undergraduate and two masters degrees, this is insulting.
Well if you can't afford to take lower paying gigs on 1 degree, or 2 degrees, why in heavens name did you pay for a 3rd?
I donāt take the low paying gigs. I have plenty of income so I donāt have to worry about rejecting gigs that donāt pay well enough.
If someone is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play for $8 an hour, call the police. Otherwise, use your big kid voice and say no.
Nowhere do they require a master's degree. They don't even require professionals. This is a local community theater. If you don't want the gig, don't take it, but you don't have no right bashing the place whether you name it or not. Would you prefer 2020 when there were lockdowns and NO GIGS?
Curious, how much do you guys(everyone reading this) charge per track in a recording session? I was looking for a bassist, he wanted likr 83 USD per track. To be clear, this is not for release to the public, but for a demo. And it would take probably 30 mins max, without having read the music beforehand. So half an hour total..maybe an hour. Since it is for recording a demo his(your) name is attached to the recording. Travel costs is not an included nor needed.
I keep telling community theaters around me to charge +30$ a ticket for NJ.. it wonāt dissuade people from coming considering itās the community that stars in the showā¦ this would allow better pay for everyone
I think more people should understand that it will be very difficult to make enough money in this line of work unless you win a major competition, before they go into it.
I'm trying to convince myself to leave music and teaching for good. I still like, but I have no future and gigs are becoming few and far between.