Orchestra 101: The Cast of Characters

Backing up a step from the first article in this series, in a school situation there are only orchestral musicians and conductors (and an audience). In a professional situation the cast of characters is more complex.

In general there is a major division between management and musicians in terms of operations. Management is, well, management. It is contractually the legal entity that runs the orchestra and includes people such as a General Manager and other staff. Musicians are the actual performers in the orchestra who are typically represented by the Union, the American Federation of Musicians.

There are several individuals who to a point reside on the fence between the two entities. One example is the permanent Principal Conductor or Music Director. From the orchestral players side of things they of course are considered to be management but looking at my old Nashville Symphony contract, which I believe is typical of those used by many orchestras in the United States, they are defined as being “responsible for the entire artistic and musical direction” of the orchestra. For whatever reasons, this reminds me of a joke, from the math test for orchestra musicians,

Wilma plays in the second violin section, but specializes in making disparaging remarks about conductors and other musicians. The probability of her making a negative comment about any given musician is 4 chances in 7, and for conductors is 16 chances in 17. If there are 103 musicians in the orchestra and the orchestra sees 26 different conductors a year, how many negative comments does Wilma make in a two-year period? How does this change if five of the musicians are also conductors? What if six of the conductors are also musicians?

Another important person who is also on the fence between management and musicians is the Personnel Manager. When you first play with an orchestra this is the first person who will officially contact you about performing with the group. They are management but also are performers in the orchestra. It is a very busy job.

The Personnel Manager shall be the official representative of Management at all services. He/she shall be responsible for timekeeping and attendance at all services, for all travel, for contracting of extra and substitute Musicians and for handling all matters regarding personnel.

There are two primary entities that represent the orchestra players in the operations of the orchestra, the Orchestra Committee and also the Union Steward.

The Orchestra Committee shall act as representative liaison between Orchestra and Management and between the Orchestra and the Union via Union Steward and shall consist of five (5) members. The Union Steward shall act as representative liaison between the Union and Management.

As an aside, the very first person to introduce himself to me before my very first rehearsal with the Nashville Symphony was the Union Steward. You may have the same experience the first time you play with a professional orchestra. The contract lays out a number of other rules regarding what they do and also that there will not be “any form of recrimination or harassment brought against any member of the Orchestra Committee or the Union Steward.”

One last grouping that will be of interest to students is that of the Audition Committee. These are selected before auditions and must

…consist of tenure track personnel only. Tenure track personnel are identified to be tenured Orchestra members or contracted Orchestra members who could through normal procedures become tenured….

I was tenured in the Nashville Symphony, and there is a process for this defined in the contract. For non-principal auditions the committees have five members and for principal auditions they have seven members

…including at least two Principals from related sections selected by the Music Director. The remainder of the committee are to be selected by the Orchestra Committee.

I have more on the contract language on how auditions are run in this related post, The Audience at Your Audition, Round by Round.