This weekend is the final concert series for the SLSO.  After this, they play with Opera Theatre St Louis and have a few other lighter classics concerts until the end of June.  Then the season is over.

I was talking about this with Mike the other day and he asked, when does the season start up again.  I told him, September.  He asked, oh, so do they spend the summer rehearsing for that?

No!  They have time off.

It’s not like middle school band when you spend all semester rehearsing for a concert.  Orchestras generally only rehearse the week of the concert for that weekend’s concert.  Let me repeat that more specifically:  orchestras generally start rehearsing on Tuesday for a Friday concert.

I realized at this point in our conversation that most people (yes, I’m taking Mike’s innocent question as what most people think.  I don’t know THAT many non-musicians, so I take these questions seriously.  Statistically I believe that works.)—most people have no idea what members of symphony orchestras do.  I wrote a wonderful post about how to get a job in a symphony orchestra (or not, really) but  then what?

What do they do in the off-season?  I’ll start with this question, even though it might be a bit backwards.

It’s not like sports, where the team needs a few months to get back in shape.  First off, the team (well, orchestra) never gets OUT of shape.  Most of the members continue working during the “off-season” at various summer festivals.  Other members take some time off and travel or relax, but generally keep practicing throughout the summer.  Or, to be honest, they take some time off, but then make a valiant attempt to get back into shape before the season starts again. Other orchestras don’t have summers off at all, and so the orchestra never gets “out of shape.” Either way, please keep in mind that outside of orchestra rehearsals and concerts, the musicians spend several hours a day practicing on their own.  (I know there are people who don’t, but I’m talking about conscientious musicians that care about their skills, their careers, and their self-worth.)

What happens during the season?  What is the work schedule like?

Generally an orchestra’s work week goes like this (and please don’t yell at me about how YOUR orchestra is different or tell me classical music is dead because I don’t care, I’m just generalizing here for the public):

• Monday:  OFF (Monday is pretty universally the off day in symphony orchestra world.)

• Tuesday: OFF or perhaps one rehearsal of 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
• Wednesday:  Usually a “double”, meaning two rehearsals, generally one is 2 hours and one is 2 1/2 hours long.
• Thursday:  Often the same as Wednesday, unless the orchestra  plays Thursday night concerts, in which case Tuesday might have been a “double”.  Either way there is generally a morning rehearsal of 2 1/2 hours OR a double.
• Friday:  Depends.  Maybe a morning concert, maybe an evening concert, maybe a morning rehearsal followed by an evening concert.
• Saturday:  Generally just an evening concert
• Sunday:  Matinee (afternoon concert) or OFF.

To complicate matters (or further clarify, depending on your interpretation), each rehearsal or concert is called a “service” and each week would have between 7 and 9 services.  Each orchestra has various rules and restrictions on how many services there can be in a given week or perhaps a limit on the number of say, 8 or 9 service weeks over the course of the season.  Also, in each 2 or 2 1/2 rehearsal there is a break in the middle of 15 to 20 minutes.  Generally for the weekend’s concert series of 2 to 4 concerts (all the same), the orchestra will have had 4 to 5 rehearsals.  The number of concert weeks ranges for each orchestra, but even an orchestra that only performs 5 concerts a year generally then only rehearses for 5 weeks.

Some of you might be saying, wow, that sounds like a pretty light schedule.  Is it?  Let’s see, 8 services, why that’s only 16 to 20 hours of work per week!  But add in 2 to 3 hours of practicing each day, and that’s another 14 to 16 hours of work.  Plus it’s not as if you simply show up right when the rehearsal starts.  Most players are there warming up 15 to 30 minutes early for each service, so that’s another 2 to 4 hours of work.  Last but not least, when you are at work, you are working.  You cannot take a phone call, you cannot respond to an email, you cannot eat a snack (well, at break you can), you cannot do countless things that it seems to me people with other jobs do.  Not to mention that it might actually take MORE practicing that 2 to 3 hours a day sometimes.  Let’s average it out to a 35 to 50 hour work week counting practice.  Oh, and remember that many orchestras make 30,000 to 40,000 a year, and many musicians have a master’s degree.  Not a light schedule, and not a cushy job.  And you do have to keep up a certain standard of playing throughout your career, a standard that is constantly getting higher.

Next, the orchestra might expect the musicians to do community service (and they SHOULD do this, community service or outreach is very important.)  This service would generally be extra pay (the symphony here trades for a week off if you do a certain amount of outreach) but would also be extra time.

Additionally, many orchestra members teach.  They generally do this on Mondays as that is pretty universally a day off (note there is no real weekend then…).  Of course, it’s extra money.  But when the orchestra gets locked out, goes bankrupt, or simply cancels the rest of the season,  those students can be a lifesaver.

That’s the day to day life of an orchestral musician (in the USA) in a nutshell.  Any questions?

(this sums up the life of a freelance musician such as myself)

Remember the concert starts very very soon:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/stlocarina

Enjoy 🙂

I came home from my long day (and my Modern Mexican dinner at Milagro with a friend) to an  Amazon box containing two of the greatest things ever.

One, the latest Harry Potter movie on DVD.  SWEET!  I hadn’t necessarily liked the first 6 HP movies, but Deathly Hallows Part 1 was great!  I did cry a lot.  I started crying pretty much as soon as I realized it was near the point where (spoiler alert?) Dobby dies.  I’m a cry baby 🙁

Two, my new Kindle!  (My old one got stolen).  My new Kindle, WHICH as we speak is charging AND downloading all my previous 56 books to it…I am so ridiculously happy about this.  My parents gave me the first one for Christmas and I loved it.  Then it got stolen and I was sad and really missed it.  Now it is back!  Still haven’t gotten the insurance check yet, but all in good time I’m sure.  I was IN THE MIDDLE of a book, which I can now finish reading!!

It will be another month before I get the case I had before (and I wanted the same one, I liked it, it was purple) but I’ll live.  I’m just thrilled that my life is beginning to return to normal.

Now for my stomach to return to normal.  OMG.  Milagro was delicious, though the service was a bit…overwhelmed?  We split the “street” corn off the cob and some guacamole, and I had the shrimp tacos.  YUM.  What makes it modern mexican?  I’m not entirely sure (I could guess but it would probably just sound racist.)

Remember tomorrow is the internet concert—tune in at 6 pm central 🙂

I love the feeling of getting a great workout done in the morning.  I met with Mike this morning and he made me do all manner of squats, walking squats, and tons of shoulder exercises.  I also did a lot of side planking.  I am now ready to face my day! 

(scary stalker picture)

Note how when Mike runs he actually leaves the ground.  Yesterday I was complaining about my running skills and Chris said, well you should have Mike coach you.  I said I didn’t want to pay for that…and he does occasionally make suggestions.  I just know I will go and run on my own but I won’t lift weights.  And without the weights I wouldn’t be quite as awesome.

(I’ve used that before, but I still love it)

Okay, hate to blog and run, but I gotta go rehearse.  Don’t forget the concert is tomorrow night and you can all watch it!   (If you do, please let me know!!)

Wow, I can’t believe it’s already Thursday night.  When you work practically non stop the time really flies by!

Tomorrow we hit the recording studio for my ocarina rehearsal—it should be fun!  I’m also hoping to have dinner with a friend, or maybe more than one.  Chris has been rehearsing nights all week (and concerts now) so I’ve been on my own in the evenings.  Tonight and last night I went to the gym (tonight:  hill sprints on the treadmill…rough…but I wore my Phoenix RnR Tshirt so I felt hardcore), but tomorrow will be a fun night instead.

I should take a picture of myself IN the shirt, though this is an impressive picture with the medal and all.  I don’t think we get enough opportunities to wear our race medals.  Maybe I’ll wear one at my wedding.

The weekend will be pretty hectic—we have a “festival concert” at the St Louis School of Music, I have a student playing Solo and Ensemble on Saturday morning, and there’s the Ocarina Concert.  Next week is crazy too in that I have two school concerts.  However, after that…well we are just heading towards summer.

Next week Chris and I have an appointment to check out a venue we are strongly considering for our wedding.  I am psyched!!  We have been hard at work making the guest list and a tentative budget.  Chris has also been hard at work researching things such as flowers, cake, invitations, and whatnot.  I would help out more but this month is just crazy.  It’s funny that he is so into the wedding planning right now…and very nice, because one of us needs to be!  (Don’t take that the wrong way, I absolutely am into getting married, but planning a wedding just makes me sleepy.  I’ve been ready to marry Chris for a decade now.  Just tell me when and where to show up.  Wait.  Am I a guy?)

I saw this in the most recent edition of Runner’s World

The real question…are the seatcovers poop-proof?  (I’m sorry, I’m sorry for all the poop jokes…I just can’t help myself…)

June 2011 of Runner’s World, that is how I look without a shirt also…oh, wait, I’m a woman…(also am not convinced of the whole no hair look for men, but that’s another story)

Yup, that’s how I look!

Okay.  So I never made my May goals—I feel like May will just be me trying to get through and live to see the end and then I’ll catch up on my goals in June.  I’m still waiting to get my kindle because I didn’t realize the cover I wanted was backordered and was causing the whole order to get behind.  I fixed it though and my kindle should be arriving in a few days.

Well, I’m off to bed—Happy Cinco de Mayo to my Mexican readers!

I was both an early and a late adapter for text messaging.  I wasn’t the first of my friends to start, but I definitely text all the time now.

Back when texting first came into the world, I mocked it.  I said, why not just make a quick phone call?  How annoying to type in all those letters?  Then I discovered predictive text, or T9 as Sprint (my phone carrier) called it.  I went from 10 texts a month to over 1000, and realized I should sign up for the unlimited pack. 

I texted all the time.  I texted without looking, back in the days when I didn’t have a touch screen.  I (admittedly) texted while driving, though let’s say I was always stopped at a light or whatnot.  I texted friends who were sitting right next to me, and I definitely annoyed people (still do) texting when I should be talking with the actual people who are in my presence.

I even started sending texts when picking a friend up (say, at their house) rather than calling.  A quick text “here” that they would receive rather than having to answer the phone.  Again, something I originally mocked, and then embraced.

Then I got a touch screen phone.  My current phone is the HTC Hero, and is a touch screen.  I would like to go on the record and say that I hate touch screen typing.  However, I have overcome it’s limitations (having to look at the screen rather than feel the numbers) and continued to text with a vengeance.  I use one finger on the tiny picture of a keyboard.

I hear there is a technology for voice-to-text.  You speak into your phone and it sends what you say as a text message.  I imagine it’s almost like making a phone call but slightly more challenging. 

When I got engaged I sent out some mass text messages.  I texted Leslie first, who responded, WHY ARE YOU SENDING THIS VIA TEXT MESSAGE?  The answer, it was FASTER.  And it JUST happened.

Here’s the issue.  The conversations are stored together, and once they reach a certain point, my phone finds it impossible to delete them.  My text conversation between Chris and I (my highest, of course) was over 2000 messages long.  With another friend, over 1000, and with several other friends, over 100.  When I first got my phone I stayed on top of the deleting, but I evidently got lazy.  What’s more, my phone was NO LONGER able to delete the messages and would crash instead.  It also was running the messaging program very slowly.  And then yesterday I realized that I might have MISSED getting a bunch of messages—most definitely some from Chris and Leslie and who knows who else?  IT WAS A DISASTER.

I finally realized I should google the problem.  I don’t know why I waited so long to use google on my problem.  And guess what…

There’s an app for that.  In fact there are a variety of apps for that.  Apps that delete your text messages that your phone can’t on its own.

So now I’ve deleted MOST of my messages, in fact, now my phone will automatically delete all but the last 100 messages. 

Will I start receiving all my text messages?  That I cannot say.  I certainly hope so.  I guess that’s the issue with this fancy new technology, it just doesn’t always work. 

So, if you have texted me and I didn’t respond, I probably didn’t get it.  You know otherwise I always have to have the last word! (Or don’t know when to quit…whatever…)

What are your thoughts on texting? Do you prefer phone calls, emails, texting, smoke signals, or what?