3 answers
Jupiter
Student
Corona, California
1
Question
Asked
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how does the classical music industry exactly work? #Spring23
How exactly would someone get a job as a classical musician? Is the industry competitive? What makes a classical composer special or big?
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3 answers
Katherine Avery
Run a music studio and teach private music lessons; teach college-level religion classes
350
Answers
Spanish Fork, Utah
Updated
Katherine’s Answer
As someone who has been playing largely classical music since age 4, and plays multiple instruments, taking private lessons on various instruments for 13 years growing up, and never was really part of a great ensemble performing scene or participated in great competitions as a student (I auditioned for and was accepted into multiple orchestras and for various reasons never actually joined any), I can just mention my own path as a classical musician who has had a fine career and done lots of playing and performing for free for more than the last 15 years:
If you are an instrumentalist and will be teaching or performing in the near future, keeping up with your own practice is always good. I probably played an equivalent of at least 10 hours a week working on whatever repertoire I was polishing in a given season, but I also often spent at least that much again just "playing for fun," including sightreading, which is a specialty for me, reviewing old music of all ease levels that I've been playing for 30 years or playing for 3 months, and generally trying to start learning new music that I wouldn't likely perform anywhere within the next 5-10 years...but once you finally know and are relatively polished on a piece, it will become an option for you to perform somewhere in the future. If that's 20 hours a week, and another 20 hours a week of paid work are going to be spent on teaching or attending rehearsals or performances or whatever, that could be a fine full-time career for you, as long as you're pricing your own side of things right, and if you're satisfied with staying busy and serving people and don't require yourself to be a really big name or have achieved anything really particular within a really short time frame--just working up to bigger and better things within a 5-year or 10-year slot. And depending who you ask and what your own goals are etc., you might consider 30 hours a week to be close to "full-time" for a musician who's partly teaching and partly doing other things, rather than 40 hours a week that people in other career fields might consider full-time. Depending what you want to do and how much you reach out for new opportunities, you might expect your busiest times of the year for work to be April/May, followed by the Christmas season, followed by everything else; and/or if you are working with specific groups of musicians or you are a well-known name in certain parts of town or with certain groups, your yearly schedule, with slight differences by the year, might look rather standard for you in a yearly cycle, and you might have weeks or months where you're working more than 40 hours a week all told, and other times of the year where, due to chance or your own planning and desires, you're not earning anything, or very much, for months or a year at a time. It's up to you to kind of figure out how you want your income to look and you can work to put things into place so that you could always plan to work on a school-year schedule and take a summer off, like supposedly schoolkids and teachers do, or any other schedule you invent and like, and you know what your income will roughly be that will allow you to take time off like that.
Generally as a 15 year old (I was going to start teaching at age 16 and was considering whether I would go to college, and whether I would study music if so, and how intensely), I could see four main options for me if I decided I study music "officially" further than I already had gone by age 15-16: I could write music, I could be a solo performer, I could be a teacher, or I could be a music critic somehow somewhere, or any combination of those. Rather than choose to write music, I chose to arrange; rather than be a solo performer, I chose to be a collaborative pianist; rather than getting some job as a music critic or name in the music scene by way of a job with a newspaper or whatever, or even choosing to start my own blog or video channel, I chose to join Facebook groups or follow musicians on social media who I really like and I think they and their music should be supported, and just hung around them and their scene and got to know what they have going on so I could have conversations with others about those groups and people and their likes and so on, and I used my own hashtags sometimes to connect my own comments and the people I want to support, and over time just generally picked up on any other kinds of trends or ideas that I might like to keep pushing in my own small way, with my own students and their families, or my friends who might not even be musical, or whatever, and I connected it to my own other interests (I like people and I'm passionate about mental health, and I and my music just go well with those interests), and as I also hung around people and groups with my other interests like that, I could just work on keeping the conversation going, and it's led to different interesting opportunities for me in my own city over the years; and rather than only teaching, I chose to teach my students to be teachers as well, and to give my students opportunities to see what being a collaborative pianist is like as they shadow me on my performing jobs if they're interested, and to work as a friendly coach with other teachers and conductors and ensemble leaders who I might be serving not in a lead position but they like having my help for certain things sometimes. And every job I've done has led to one or more new people seeing me or I get to know someone else, and by word of mouth, my schedule has always stayed busy as much as I wanted it to.
If you want one of the best current ways to get some students, if you're interested in trying to do some teaching, you can look into sites like Thumbtack and Lessons.com, where you would get leads sent to your phone and email on a rather steady basis, and you can always choose whether you want to follow up a lead. You can also see about putting short lessons or courses or videos about anything music or skill or interest related online or sending to an email subscription group that you build, and gain your own audience who likes your content; those can be other income streams for you. And you can attend any and all outdoor concerts in the park, and every performance of a classical orchestra or ensemble or soloist in the towns near you, so you can get to know the venues and artists who come along, and if an orchestra invites people to join them for a fun free day sometime you could join up and get to know more people that way.
Join a church or put your name where some group of people would think of you when they want church music performed--weddings, funerals, seasonal things, choir practices, services, etc. and once you get your place established with one church, you'll more likely start meeting the people in your area who probably do more of the church music at all the churches around.
I would recommend setting up a business structure for yourself if you are thinking you'll have a teaching or performing or other musical career for several years, as most immediately it can help you be more organized on knowing what income you can expect and planning various ways to ensure a smoother financial outlook, and you might be able to be more efficient on paying taxes etc.; something you can use as a broad template for knowing what steps to take in what order for that would be this workbook (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/bc/content/ldsorg/topics/self-reliance/2017/14678_sgmb_book_eng.pdf?lang=eng)
If you feel like becoming an instrument technician to any degree or for any specialty, you might take time to look into programs or apprenticeships for that.
You can subscribe to newsletters and magazines that might offer tips over time for learning more about composition or places to submit your own work to be heard more or gain recognition or awards, if you're interested in that.
If you are an instrumentalist and will be teaching or performing in the near future, keeping up with your own practice is always good. I probably played an equivalent of at least 10 hours a week working on whatever repertoire I was polishing in a given season, but I also often spent at least that much again just "playing for fun," including sightreading, which is a specialty for me, reviewing old music of all ease levels that I've been playing for 30 years or playing for 3 months, and generally trying to start learning new music that I wouldn't likely perform anywhere within the next 5-10 years...but once you finally know and are relatively polished on a piece, it will become an option for you to perform somewhere in the future. If that's 20 hours a week, and another 20 hours a week of paid work are going to be spent on teaching or attending rehearsals or performances or whatever, that could be a fine full-time career for you, as long as you're pricing your own side of things right, and if you're satisfied with staying busy and serving people and don't require yourself to be a really big name or have achieved anything really particular within a really short time frame--just working up to bigger and better things within a 5-year or 10-year slot. And depending who you ask and what your own goals are etc., you might consider 30 hours a week to be close to "full-time" for a musician who's partly teaching and partly doing other things, rather than 40 hours a week that people in other career fields might consider full-time. Depending what you want to do and how much you reach out for new opportunities, you might expect your busiest times of the year for work to be April/May, followed by the Christmas season, followed by everything else; and/or if you are working with specific groups of musicians or you are a well-known name in certain parts of town or with certain groups, your yearly schedule, with slight differences by the year, might look rather standard for you in a yearly cycle, and you might have weeks or months where you're working more than 40 hours a week all told, and other times of the year where, due to chance or your own planning and desires, you're not earning anything, or very much, for months or a year at a time. It's up to you to kind of figure out how you want your income to look and you can work to put things into place so that you could always plan to work on a school-year schedule and take a summer off, like supposedly schoolkids and teachers do, or any other schedule you invent and like, and you know what your income will roughly be that will allow you to take time off like that.
Generally as a 15 year old (I was going to start teaching at age 16 and was considering whether I would go to college, and whether I would study music if so, and how intensely), I could see four main options for me if I decided I study music "officially" further than I already had gone by age 15-16: I could write music, I could be a solo performer, I could be a teacher, or I could be a music critic somehow somewhere, or any combination of those. Rather than choose to write music, I chose to arrange; rather than be a solo performer, I chose to be a collaborative pianist; rather than getting some job as a music critic or name in the music scene by way of a job with a newspaper or whatever, or even choosing to start my own blog or video channel, I chose to join Facebook groups or follow musicians on social media who I really like and I think they and their music should be supported, and just hung around them and their scene and got to know what they have going on so I could have conversations with others about those groups and people and their likes and so on, and I used my own hashtags sometimes to connect my own comments and the people I want to support, and over time just generally picked up on any other kinds of trends or ideas that I might like to keep pushing in my own small way, with my own students and their families, or my friends who might not even be musical, or whatever, and I connected it to my own other interests (I like people and I'm passionate about mental health, and I and my music just go well with those interests), and as I also hung around people and groups with my other interests like that, I could just work on keeping the conversation going, and it's led to different interesting opportunities for me in my own city over the years; and rather than only teaching, I chose to teach my students to be teachers as well, and to give my students opportunities to see what being a collaborative pianist is like as they shadow me on my performing jobs if they're interested, and to work as a friendly coach with other teachers and conductors and ensemble leaders who I might be serving not in a lead position but they like having my help for certain things sometimes. And every job I've done has led to one or more new people seeing me or I get to know someone else, and by word of mouth, my schedule has always stayed busy as much as I wanted it to.
If you want one of the best current ways to get some students, if you're interested in trying to do some teaching, you can look into sites like Thumbtack and Lessons.com, where you would get leads sent to your phone and email on a rather steady basis, and you can always choose whether you want to follow up a lead. You can also see about putting short lessons or courses or videos about anything music or skill or interest related online or sending to an email subscription group that you build, and gain your own audience who likes your content; those can be other income streams for you. And you can attend any and all outdoor concerts in the park, and every performance of a classical orchestra or ensemble or soloist in the towns near you, so you can get to know the venues and artists who come along, and if an orchestra invites people to join them for a fun free day sometime you could join up and get to know more people that way.
Join a church or put your name where some group of people would think of you when they want church music performed--weddings, funerals, seasonal things, choir practices, services, etc. and once you get your place established with one church, you'll more likely start meeting the people in your area who probably do more of the church music at all the churches around.
I would recommend setting up a business structure for yourself if you are thinking you'll have a teaching or performing or other musical career for several years, as most immediately it can help you be more organized on knowing what income you can expect and planning various ways to ensure a smoother financial outlook, and you might be able to be more efficient on paying taxes etc.; something you can use as a broad template for knowing what steps to take in what order for that would be this workbook (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/bc/content/ldsorg/topics/self-reliance/2017/14678_sgmb_book_eng.pdf?lang=eng)
If you feel like becoming an instrument technician to any degree or for any specialty, you might take time to look into programs or apprenticeships for that.
You can subscribe to newsletters and magazines that might offer tips over time for learning more about composition or places to submit your own work to be heard more or gain recognition or awards, if you're interested in that.
Alex F
A&P Mechanic and Self-Employed Musician
16
Answers
Fort Mill, South Carolina
Updated
Alex’s Answer
First, as a classical musician: Orchestras post vacancies on their websites and often to job sites such as musicalchairs.info. They'll sometimes post the repertoire for the audition, other times you'll need to send a resume to apply. In response you get the repertoire. When you show up on audition day you'll find out which excerpts are in the preliminary round and be given a number and sent to a general warm up room. When your number is up they take you to a secluded practice room. Then they take you to the audition room (a rehearsal space or concert hall). There will be a large screen separating you from the panel, and a chair and stand for you to use. You play and hopefully advance. Semi finals is the same with more excerpts. Finals might be the same, could be playing with a pianist, could be playing with a section. The winner is given a trial period with the orchestra. If you get through probation then you have a job as a classical musician. This is the easy part, the hard part is years of hard work practicing, taking lessons, and taking auditions that you don't win (very few people win one of their first auditions).
Secondly, yes. The industry is VERY competitive. You could have 150 people show up for a job paying $40-50k a year. Only one person wins. With larger orchestras like the NY Phil, if you don't pass the resume screening you will have to send in an unedited recording. You can only show up if invited which keeps the number of auditionees down. What makes their music special is very subjective, but to the industry it will be who sells tickets.
For the last question, I'm assuming you are referring to living. It's very difficult to become a classical composer in the modern day. Beethoven, Mahler, etc bring in patrons and fill the seats enough and do not require royalties/copyright fees. The living "classical" composers that one will hear a lot are film composers. People flock to hear the music of John Williams, but the orchestra also pays more to perform his music.
No matter which job you go for in classical music, it will be competitive. It will take hard work. It will also take a little bit of luck. If you get a job and work as a classical musician, there is no other feeling in the world. You know you have succeeded where so many thousands have failed. Unless you record an album that becomes popular with the masses like Yo-Yo-Ma, you won't become rich. There are commercial musician jobs on Broadway and in the film studios. Those are all freelance, which means that in addition to being good at music, you need to be good at networking.
Secondly, yes. The industry is VERY competitive. You could have 150 people show up for a job paying $40-50k a year. Only one person wins. With larger orchestras like the NY Phil, if you don't pass the resume screening you will have to send in an unedited recording. You can only show up if invited which keeps the number of auditionees down. What makes their music special is very subjective, but to the industry it will be who sells tickets.
For the last question, I'm assuming you are referring to living. It's very difficult to become a classical composer in the modern day. Beethoven, Mahler, etc bring in patrons and fill the seats enough and do not require royalties/copyright fees. The living "classical" composers that one will hear a lot are film composers. People flock to hear the music of John Williams, but the orchestra also pays more to perform his music.
No matter which job you go for in classical music, it will be competitive. It will take hard work. It will also take a little bit of luck. If you get a job and work as a classical musician, there is no other feeling in the world. You know you have succeeded where so many thousands have failed. Unless you record an album that becomes popular with the masses like Yo-Yo-Ma, you won't become rich. There are commercial musician jobs on Broadway and in the film studios. Those are all freelance, which means that in addition to being good at music, you need to be good at networking.
Pooyan Naderi
Music Composition
2
Answers
Tehran, Tehran Province, Iran
Updated
Pooyan’s Answer
In short, musicians have always problem to find a good job. However, as a performer there are competitive positions in all orchestras for instrument players. Also, you can teach music and make money as a freelancer or a college or university instructor if you get related diploma or certificates. And about being a classical music composer, I should say it is really hard to find a constant job with a steady salary. Again, teaching would be a better choice.