New Broadway contract for musicians' union

Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians signed a 3-year contract with Broadway producers:

NEW YORK (AP) _ The musicians union Local 802 has amiably agreed to a three-year contract with Broadway producers, a contrast to the last round of negotiations that culminated in a strike and darkened Broadway for days.

Members of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians approved the contract with The League of American Theatres and Producers, Disney Theatrical Productions, and Musical Rights, Inc., following a union ratification meeting on May 16, officials said.

The contract expands the pool of musicians eligible for health care, and includes more contributions to the health plan from producers. In return, musicians gave up two wage increases during the term of the agreement. No other details were released. [AP]

Consider this an open thread for 802 members and anyone else who wants to talk about the contract.

Comments, complaints, gossip? Dish here.

 

Comments

[greensmile]

There are still non union gigs. But outside of Broadway and symphony orchestra and opera establishments, I get the impression its hard to make a living if you are classically trained and don't have a band of your own. The playing of music is much romanticised by the music teaching profession and the experience, as I have seen it, that parents put kids through. They are tought to play for the love of it and then they find out that even if they are quite good with their instrument, their playing is an overstocked commodity and many of external reinforcements of their training years fall away. Its a job...once in a while. In a market like that, a union is all that would keep musicians from be shafted.

People knock themselves out at Curtis, or Julliard spending more hours learning their craft than any plumber or electrician and forgoing the breadth of studies any other 4-year curriculum would include. Half of these "best of the best" musicians are not even in music teaching by the end of the decade after they graduate. That is to say, if you are realistic enough to deal with the discrepancy between the refinement and breadth of your own repetoire and the prospect of playing the same 15 pieces five or six times a week as the condition of employment then you could entertain the notion of a performance career. The variety and challenge is greater if you play in a symphony orchestra but you have to be damned good and not too proud to teach on the side. Hoping for a chair in a major orchestra is almost like hoping for a spot on a major league NBA team just because you like to shoot hoops.

I can't play a note but all three of my kids have spent years in the New England Conservatory and other youth orchestras. The violist who was getting the occasional job in the orchestra pit at NYU productions or doing infrequent studio work for the composition majors finally decided he was not ready to give up every other interest. When he got home from this semester, he was begged to sit in with the viola section of the high school's civic orchestra. That orchestra is half students and half older musicians from the community who just like to play...for free of course. He had been in that viola section all through high school. He made one rehersal but played well in longish five composer program ending with a Brahms smyphony. An unfamiliar player was in the section and he talked to her afterwards: she was the back up the conductor never needed to call when my son played in the section and that is why he never met her before.
You have to be so much more than just a good musician to make a living performing that I can't imagine the trade surviving without a union.

[greensmile]

I know Majikthise Enterprises has a musician on staff. I'd be curious if the advent of computerized orchestral performance [such as was written up in the weekend edtion of the WSJ two weeks ago] is going to impact the business. Can't imagine it putting a dent in the market for music that has improvisational elements but it must be a scare for the classical performers.

[DJA]

I'd be curious if the advent of computerized orchestral performance [such as was written up in the weekend edtion of the WSJ two weeks ago] is going to impact the business.

Broadway producers have been trying to foist that "Virtual Orchestra" crap on audiences for years, but so far the NY local has successfully resisted. I haven't seen the new contract yet, but from the AP description it sounds pretty good. Our local recently voted in new leadership, and so far, they seem to be more competent and less corrupt than the previous bunch.

Also, people who are into creative music in NYC and couldn't give a shit about Broadway need to understand that Broadway pits are one of the only ways creative musicians are able to make enough money to do creative things. A lot of the guys in my band are Broadway regulars -- they will sub out of their shows for a night to do a Secret Society gig (which means they take a huge hit every time the play my stuff). Without Broadway, they could not afford to be involved in creative music at all.

[DJA]

it must be a scare for the classical performers.

Not really. The classical music audience has zero interest in seeing performers replaced by computers. It's only in situations where the performers are invisible (recording, TV, film, B'way) that this technology has made any inroads. There's some chance regional and/or amateur opera companies will be tempted to use it, but every time they try it they get serious pushback from the singers, who hate it.

But there's no chance anyone's going to want to go see Brahms performed by two violins and a laptop.

Also, in the WSJ article you mentioned, it was trivially easy to spot the fake. The fact that neither the Eastman Dean of Composition nor the Berklee Dean of Music Technology could do so ought to be seriously embarrassing for them, especially since they presumably got to listen to recordings that were a lot more hi-fi than the over-compresssed audio the WSJ is hosting.

[greensmile]

Interesting. Thanks DJA. I had not picked up on the supporting connection that the "steady" [ha!] jobs on B'way provide for the more creative performance scene. I guess that fleshes out my guesswork about how real musicians handle the compromise of making a living: music-as-trade/commodity is the life line for people who live because of music-as-art.

[DJA]

music-as-trade/commodity is the life line for people who live because of music-as-art

That's absolutely correct. For instance, what creative music scene there is in Orlando only exists thanks to the theme park paychecks.

[Uncle Kvetch]

Here's a related question: we recently saw John Doyle's production of Sondheim's "Company," which, like his production of "Sweeney Todd" last season, has the ensemble doubling as musicians, so there's no orchestra in the pit.

So, in our post-show recap conversation, the idle thought occurred...or rather, two thoughts, really:

1) Under union rules, do the producers of a show like this have to pay an orchestra's worth of musicians to sit at home and not play every night?

2) Would the performers in these shows be getting paid both as actor/singers and musicians?

Just curious, but I thought DJA (or anyone else with a knowledge of things 802) might know.

(Great show, by the way...I highly recommend it.)

[DJA]

Kvetch,

I've wondered about both of those things myself and I don't know the answer. Normally there is a union-negotiated minimum orchestra size, which varies somewhat with the size of the theatre -- but if you want to use a smaller-than-minimum orchestra, you still have to pay for the full group. There are also different rules for Broadway and Off-Broadway, and Company and Sweeney may have technically qualified as Off-Broadway shows.

As far as the actors go, the principals are already being paid far and above scale to begin with, so (2) only really applies to the secondary roles, and I have no idea what kind of provisions Actor's Equity might have made for such an unusual circumstance. I do know there was no controversy about either show so they must have come to some kind of agreement with both Local 802 and Equity that permitted these shows to proceed.

[Uncle Kvetch]

Thanks, DJA.

but if you want to use a smaller-than-minimum orchestra, you still have to pay for the full group

That's what I figured...but pay whom, exactly? In a situation like that, are a certain number of 802 members "hired" (and paid) but not expected to play, or do the producers just pay into some general union fund, or what? Just wondering.

[DJA]

That's an excellent question, and I'm afraid I have no idea. What would make the most sense would be for the extra money to be distributed amongst the musicians who are actually playing the show, though I doubt that actually happens -- it's far more likely the money goes into the general fund.

[Andrew Myers]

I picked the right sample in the WSJ quiz, but I might have just gotten lucky because I can't articulate precisely why it sounded fake to me. Something about the clarinet solo sounded unmusical somehow, like a beginning piano student playing the right notes but without the proper phrasing.

[DJA]

I might have just gotten lucky because I can't articulate precisely why it sounded fake to me

It's not luck just because you can't verbalize exactly what tipped you off. Humans are generally very good at detecting when someone is lying to them, even if they can't articulate why they think they're being lied to.

But yeah, the sample-based clarinet sound is definitely a "tell." I also think it would be even more obvious to you if you'd heard the uncompressed audio, and certainly instantly obvious to everyone if you were to compare the live sound of an unamplified orchestra with orchestral samples being played through loudspeakers.

[Melanie]

DJA,

I don't know what the new 802 contract looks like, but the general rule in the past is that specific musicians were paid to "walk" the show. The contractor and the union agree on who is going to walk, generally people that the contractor would like to have available for back up in case of illness or other absences. Walkers generally have to be in the theater at the opening curtain to be sure they are ready to cover in case of last minute emergencies, so they still have commutation costs, plus the costs that all musicians have: maintaining their instruments (this is not cheap) and their skills (time consuming.)

[craig johnson]

Settled ....."amiably?"
Amiably..amicably...what's the difference?