Freedom, Life in the Free-Lance Lane : Musicians play for several outlets but strains increase

James Thatcher sees himself as an independent businessman. The 38-year-old French-horn player has built a substantial studio career in addition to his work with the Pasadena and Pacific symphonies. “It’s not uncommon for me to do a film in the morning and ‘Ein Heldenleben’ at night,” he says. “There’s no such thing as an ordinary week.”

Thatcher is one member of Los Angeles’ free-lance musician work force. Like the others, he may spend as much of his workday behind the wheel of his car as behind a music stand, but he relishes the variety of music the free-lance life provides.

“The balance is wonderful,” says violist Laura Kuennen. “I’m often tired, I’m often overworked, but I’m never bored.” Kuennen has been here less than two years, after experiences with large orchestras in Rochester, Puerto Rico and San Diego.

She adds that the combination of work available to her, “is probably possible only in Los Angeles. Free-lancing here is much more wide open than in New York--New York is very tightly controlled.”

Consider--if you are not subject to vertigo--just some of the labyrinthine interrelationships among some local orchestras.

The principal trumpeter of the Pasadena Symphony plays principal trumpet with the Pacific Symphony, the principal bassoonist of the Pacific Symphony is also principal for the Glendale Symphony, the principal cellist of the Glendale Symphony is co-principal of the Long Beach Symphony, the concertmaster of the Long Beach Symphony shares the post in the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the whole viola section of the Chamber Orchestra is part of the Pasadena Symphony.

Throw in other community orchestras--and there are 37 that have found it worthwhile to sign a master agreement with Musicians’ Local 47 alone, not including ensembles in Long Beach and Orange County--which employ many of these players as principals, and it should be clear that there are some very busy musicians in town.

Particularly since these orchestras are not even the main source of income for many of these players. Local part-time orchestras are beneficiaries of the enormous pool of top-notch players drawn here by high-paying studio work. From these ranks come the key musicians who can make regional and community orchestras in the area sound like world-class ensembles, given the right conductors.

That, at least, is the conventional wisdom, and it provided a fair picture of the way things were. A laissez-faire sort of non-system evolved that, horrors of scheduling aside, served both organizations and musicians well.

But the system is changing under pressure from within and without the orchestras, as the groups themselves and the needs of the players change. Strain is showing as orchestras dive into the talent pool and hit bottom, and competition begins to color cooperation.

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“It is difficult, and it’s getting more difficult all the time,” Robert McMullin, executive director of the Pasadena Symphony, says of the effort to secure the services of the best free-lance players. “Los Angeles is becoming more and more an important center for the arts, and, as it happens, the core players--the studio musicians--are in greater and greater demand.”

Other orchestra administrators echo McMullin’s plaint. Through close cooperation, though, they try to minimize scheduling conflicts, allowing their musicians as much freedom as possible.

“One thing that I think is positive,” says McMullin, “is that there is a greater awareness among orchestra managers that we’re going to have to cooperate. With that happening, we may be able to avert disaster.”

“We have to make it as ‘do-able’ as possible by consulting with colleagues,” says Mary Newkirk, general manager of the Long Beach Symphony. “We go out of our way to see that that happens. We exchange our schedules a year, two years, in advance.”

The players appreciate those efforts. “We’re lucky to have good contractors and managers,” says Susan Ranney, principal bassist for the Chamber Orchestra and the Pasadena Symphony. Last season, Pasadena and Music Center Opera (for which the Chamber Orchestra is the pit band) changed some rehearsals to ease the pressure of overlapping dates.

Steven Scharf, the personnel manager for both the Long Beach Symphony and the Chamber Orchestra, says: “It’s my job to see both ends of the issue of free-lancing.” In addition to trying to juggle schedules, most orchestras also have a policy of allowing some absences. Flexibility, indeed, is the great virtue of the present free-market system, according to all managers.

But Scharf warns that the future may be much more rigid. “I’m going to have to cut that flexibility,” he says. In Long Beach during the last season, with its search for a music director, there were five rehearsals for each concert and musicians were allowed to miss one. Next season, however, the orchestra is going back to four rehearsals and players will find it harder to get out of any.

The Long Beach Symphony is also expanding its season. Also with full calendars are the Chamber Orchestra--which augments its own busy season with engagements as the orchestra for the Music Center Opera, totaling more than 200 services for the coming season--and the Pacific Symphony--which can offer its musicians engagements accompanying other organizations at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, such as the Pacific Chorale and visitors such as American Ballet Theatre. Both offer large numbers of concerts and rehearsal dates, with accompanying paychecks, to their players.

The result of larger seasons is an increased pressure on players to commit themselves to the organizations and increased sense of competition for the players’ services.

“The players will bounce around from orchestra to orchestra, and its hard to get them to commit,” acknowledges Scharf. “The expansion is not as much of a problem as that the younger players are getting older, more experienced and more in demand.”

“At a certain point, truthfully, we have to say, ‘You have a commitment with us,’ ” says Deborah Rutter, executive director of the Chamber Orchestra, who points out that the commitment works two ways. “I’ve been here (with LACO) 2 1/2 years, and this is the worst . . . and it’s getting much worse.”

In a chicken-and-the-egg situation: The quest for key players is itself feeding the move toward longer seasons. Says Newkirk: “No question, it’s going to be harder as all the orchestras grow. We want to compete for the best players. That’s one of the factors that drives us to get back to a larger level of performances.”

Newkirk adds, however, that “I truly believe that the competition is not between orchestras--who gets the best players or even subscribers’ dollars--but for people’s time.”

The musicians express a mixture of worry and optimism about the situation.

“People on all ends have been very understanding,” says Kuennen, a violist with the Chamber Orchestra, Long Beach Symphony and the New 20th-Century Players at CalArts, where she teaches. “How long they’ll be able to keep that going, I don’t know. I think everybody who employs free-lance musicians understands that if they put the screws to them too hard (to commit to any one organization), they’re going to be the losers. They want to keep the talent pool happy.”

For all the understanding, good will and collegial consultation, there are still inevitable scheduling conflicts, which force some hard decisions on players and create curious coincidental anomalies. Kuennen, for example, is on the Pasadena roster but, she says, “I haven’t played with them this season, because I’ve been too busy.”

When musicians must choose between orchestras--as they will have to do more and more as seasons expand--the choice is seldom made over money. Pay and benefits are almost the same per service, roughly $85 for concerts and $65 for rehearsals, in all of these orchestras.

Instead, the musicians pick the orchestra offering the most interesting repertory (or repertory with important solos for their instrument) and the most artistically and personally congenial people. On this point, nobody is more important than the conductor.

“There is an inside joke among local per-service orchestra managers who depend upon hiring the best studio musicians,” McMullin wrote in Symphony magazine. “If one orchestra aces another by providing more interesting or more remunerative work, the winning manager is liable to chortle condescendingly, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that Los Angeles has so many good musicians to pick from?’ Indeed it is wonderful, but getting first choice saves nerves and pleases conductors.”

That was made very clear in May, following Keith Clark’s last concert as music director of the Pacific Symphony. He made public a letter blasting the orchestra management for allowing key players to miss rehearsals for Pasadena Symphony, Joffrey Ballet and recording dates. In response, Stewart Woodward, president of the Pacific Symphony board of directors, noted that this flexibility follows a traditional pattern and is part of the orchestra’s agreement with its players. He also suggested that the players may have been expressing their own feelings about Clark by working elsewhere when he was conducting.

Though reluctant to go on the record about their artistic preferences, several of the musicians interviewed for this story agreed that they made at least some of their decisions about where to play based on who was conducting.

The Pacific Symphony was working under a new contract when Clark made his complaints. Before that incident, Louis Spisto, executive director of the orchestra, noted that “we do need to define excused absences.” Otherwise, he said, “the new contract is working out well, with few hitches. This season we’ve offered tenure, guaranteed minimums and set procedures for auditions and termination. At the moment, we have a situation that is good for us and good for the players.”

There is some feeling, however, among rank-and-file section players in the larger orchestras, that what is good for the mobile first-desk musicians may not be good for the whole orchestra, something that union officials and musicians acknowledge.

“I think there is a fear from some of the section players that we don’t want to see the orchestra grow, but that’s not true,” says Thatcher, principal French-horn player for the Pacific and Pasadena symphonies. “We don’t want to see it become so stringent that you can’t do anything else.”

Bernie Fleischer, president of Local 47, says that in contracts he likes to see, “the kind of flexibility that will allow those orchestras to retain their important players. The union’s ends are labor ends, not artistic ends, but I think everyone’s beginning to realize that playing together consistently makes the best orchestras.”

“We want to play more because we want to be better--and that includes getting the best players,” says Newkirk in Long Beach. “We never pay them enough, so we’ve got to offer them an artistic experience. I think the players would like to see us grow-- we would like to see us grow. We’re very clear about where we are going and how we’re going to get there. There is no dissatisfaction because everyone knows what the limits are.”

Even the players with the busiest outside schedules express strong feelings of professional pride and artistic satisfaction about their work in their multiple orchestras.

“Every group I play in, plays really well,” boasts Kuennen, while Thatcher says, “Another thing I like about the free-lance world is that everybody is always trying their best.”

The resultant quality of these orchestras, given strong artistic leadership, is high. There is a question, though, given the personnel duplication in major positions, whether there is a homogenizing effect.

“I think it’s difficult,” Mary Newkirk says. “I’m not sure many orchestras have their own sound anymore.”

Not surprisingly then, orchestra executives tend to look to their music directors for a distinctive artistic stamp, referring to a Jorge Mester sound in Pasadena, or an Iona Brown string sound at the Chamber Orchestra.

For some players, the insecurity of life without a regular salary is more apparent than real.

“Because it’s so diversified, there’s always something going on,” says Susan Ranney, pointing out that many of these players flit from festival to festival during the summer as regularly as they commute between orchestras during the regular season. “It’s becoming a year-round thing, being a free-lancer.

“I would love to have a steady job, but that isn’t sufficient motivation to practice for an audition, where you are competing with college and conservatory kids who do nothing but practice all day.”

In a widely read--and often debated--speech the executive vice president of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Ernest Fleischmann, proclaimed “The Orchestra Is Dead, Long Live the Community of Musicians.” There he pointed to dissatisfaction, frustration and boredom among orchestra musicians, and recommended converting standard orchestras to flexible--there’s that word again--communities of musicians, able to provide their members with an exciting, personally satisfying range of work.

Many of the free-lance musicians, with experience in full-time orchestras, including the Philharmonic, would concur with Fleischmann in his portrayal of the often demoralizing effect of routine work in those ensembles. Not only may the repertory be standardized, but the players must work with the same people every day.

Ranney says: “I’m very happy with what I do. Not only is it a combination of different types of music, but you see different people.” As the mother of a small child, she adds: “Your time is your own.”

But she and her colleagues see the potential problems on the horizon.

“Hopefully it will all be worked out, though I don’t know how,” she says. “I think we all benefit from this, in the general health of all our minds.”