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Julia Rose posted to her site recently a very interesting article on “Audition Fads.” In it she touched on several topics but I would like to focus in on just one portion of it, on the topic of tenure.
Tenure is a form of guaranteed employment and as Julia notes usually orchestra contracts in the United States address the topic of tenure in the first year of employment. Tenure is a big deal in the orchestral and academic worlds.
The week I received tenure at Arizona State I put up a short article where I stated that “gaining tenure in my former position in the Nashville Symphony was not nearly as stressful.” Expanding on that thought a bit, really in my experience it was much easier to get tenure in the orchestra. Looking back to that first season (it was granted my first season) it was mostly just doing my job, playing in tune, and being a good colleague. The hard part was winning the job.
I have heard college administrators say something to the effect that the tenure decision is the most important decision that is ever made by the university. Because of that it is a brutal, long process. And now the brutal part of the process as Julia notes in her article is spreading into the orchestral world.
There is a horn audition that will be happening in a few months for principal horn of a chamber orchestra that has most of the usual requirements….
However, one thing that I do NOT like about this audition is that the information sent to the candidates states that the orchestra has a tenure process lasting “no less than 3 years.” In most orchestras, a musician can only be granted a leave of absence for one year, MAYBE two, without being forced to make the decision to either return to the orchestra or resign from their position. A 3 year tenure process deters candidates currently under contract with an orchestra from taking the audition. Most tenured musicians are not willing to take a risk of unemployment, and because of this it’s very certain that the musicians who show up will not be under contract with an orchestra. Perhaps this is what they want, but the position is for principal horn, and most orchestras like to get someone seasoned with lots of orchestral experience (i.e. previous years of employment in an orchestra) for that position.
Reading this it makes me reflect a bit on things yet again. I am one of the handful of horn professors at any school in the United States that has had tenure in a full time orchestral position and currently has tenure at a research one university.
I had tenure in Nashville but we had faith that it was time to move on in a new direction when I accepted the horn professor position at the Crane School of Music. And I was well into the tenure process there when I joined the faculty at Arizona State. With each change of job I was told things by administrators that did not necessarily mesh with reality as I later experienced it, in fairness to them at least in part because the academic world is changing. Would I do it again? Yes, but if I knew then what I know now it would have given me more to think about at the least.
Julia is absolutely correct that the long process (seven years in academia) “deters candidates currently under contract with an orchestra” from applying. In particular not too many people are willing to leave a tenured orchestral position for a university position. It is a different world and there are no guarantees of tenure and potentially not a lot of help in the process. In many respects you are on your own in a system full of heavy-duty academics in other fields.
Tenure is difficult to achieve and can be lost. To lose tenure in an academic setting the primary reason would be just cause of some type. This is also true in an orchestral setting; for some final thoughts on this topic please read the final article of my original Orchestra 101 series.
UPDATE: That article is off the site, but the same materials are updated and are a part of my Orchestra 101 book/ebook, for more information visit Horn Notes Edition.
