Auditioning the Audition Process

For Day 4, I’d like to focus on an aspect of the hiring process that happens after auditions – namely the granting of tenure.

I’ve spent the past 33 or so years (except for a sabbatical year and a year in a quartet) in four full-time orchestras. During that time, exactly two of the many musicians hired by those orchestras were not granted tenure. I suspect that this is pretty representative of the experience of most US and Canadian orchestras, although I’m sure there are some outliers as well.

Contrast this with what Fergus reports from Berlin, where roughly 1/3 of new hires are let go after the probationary period. What explains this very striking disparity?

I can think of three possible explanations. The first is the process; Berlin’s is more impersonal, in the sense that a much larger number of people are making the decision to terminate, which for most musicians would be a hard decision to make.

The second is that Berlin is not trying hard enough to make good decisions in the first place.

The third (which is the one I favor) is that Berlin views the granting of tenure as when they make the real decision to hire, while orchestras over here view it as merely a confirmation of a decision already made – a decision which will stand absent strong evidence that the original decision was a mistake.

What do the panelists think?

A modest proposal defended

I’m grateful to the panelists for the thoughtful consideration of my modest proposal, although I wish there had been more discussion of its second part, which was to spend far more time with semi-finalists before they even get to the finals.

It’s true that the idea of remote auditions could be difficult to administer and costly as well. But so is the present system. Those of us on the listening side of the screen tend to forget this because most of the cost of the current system is borne by the candidates. But an audition with 60 candidates in an orchestra’s hall is liable to cost a total somewhere between $25,000 and $50,000 – most of which is paid to the airlines by the candidates. A system that would cost orchestras more would be well worth the expense, especially if some of that cost (say, $100 per audition) could be recouped directly from the candidates. And it would likely be less expensive overall. We tend to forget that auditions are as much for the benefit of orchestras as candidates; a system that put more of the financial burden on large employers rather than small employees would be fairer than what we have.

I think a system could be designed in which, once or twice a month, 10 to 15 orchestras across the country have an audition day, during which 50 to 100 applicants for various orchestras on various instruments come to play their audition. I can’t believe that the resulting $5-10,000 (50 – 100 candidates @ $100 per head) wouldn’t cover the cost of running the audition.

The current system is exactly analogous to a system of college admissions in which each college not only has its own entrance exam, but insists that candidates travel to the college to take that exam. That would likely cut down on the number of applications, but that’s hardly a positive outcome for colleges, is it? I know for a fact that some very qualified candidates for jobs in my orchestra haven’t come to auditions because they couldn’t travel on the day of the audition, for whatever reason. That was our loss as much as theirs; perhaps even more. And it was a loss caused solely by our insistence on running the cheapest system possible for processing large numbers of applicants.

Over the course of a 30-year career, my orchestra will pay a section musician more than $2 million in salary and benefits (in 2007 dollars and 2007 rates). Wouldn’t it be a good investment to spend a little more upfront to make sure that we’ve got the best possible person for that $2 million?