# I can't find answers to these questions.



## Jaws (Jun 4, 2011)

Why do amateur orchestras do concerts? 

I am trying to find out what is behind the thinking that it is a good idea for amateur orchestras to do concerts? 
Something that happened recently reminded me of this interesting question.

Most people would not charge for a service that they had no formal training in.

Most jobs require some form of training, and often the amount that an employer pays is based on experience and skill level and knowledge of the job. The people who play in amateur orchestras would not get jobs as professional musicians because they don't meet the skill requirements needed, and they mostly have no experience or knowledge of what is actually required to play orchestral music. 
The skill levels they usually have are often comparable to an 18 year old school leaver. 

The training after school for a professional orchestral musician is often as long as that required for medical doctor.

In my experience most people seem to be able to grasp the concept that a school leaver with no extra training would not be able to do the job of a fully trained doctor. However in my experience amateur orchestral musicians can't grasp the concept that the way their orchestra plays is nothing like a professional orchestra and often more resembles a good school orchestra. I don't understand why they can't seem to understand that this is the case. Is it due to a lack of education about music playing and music standards?

The other aspect of this that I don't understand is why they expect audience members to pay for tickets? 
For the level of training of the players the ticket price should be very low, but often is more expensive than a concert by a well known professional orchestra.

In my experience the audiences are usually made up of family and friends who have been asked by one of the performers to buy tickets to their concert. This means that much of the ticket income comes from the same family income as the subscription to join the orchestra for the playing member. 

I think most people would be horrified to be asked to pay a top price for a low quality service. Is the reason that most of the audience are prepared to do this is because they don't want to upset their friends? If this is the case what does that say about the people who are playing in the concert regarding asking their friends to pay for a ticket to an event in which they themselves will perform badly due to lack of skill. ( Most people would be unimpressed by a ventriloquist whose lips moved when he performed, because they hadn't got enough skill. Amateur orchestra concerts are like this.) 

Are the players using emotional blackmail to extract money for tickets from their friends? The money extracted benefits the orchestral players because it means that their subscriptions are lower, however if no concerts were performed the subscriptions could be even lower, without having to ask other people to subsidise a hobby enjoyed by someone else.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

That was a weird ramble. Amateur musicians form amateur ensembles because they like to play music -- duos, string quartets, orchestras . . . It is a challenge. It's fun. It's educational. There are usually costs involved -- and it's not the least bit unusual to ask listeners to help defray them -- usually, at least "some" enjoyment is had. I pay to go to High School plays and musicals,
college performances, HS and college sports events. Why not an amateur orchestra?

PS: And I've never been to an amateur concert that approached the cost of a Boston Symphony or New York Philharmonic ticket by an order of magnitude.


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

The original post is so wrong on so many levels - full of generalisations and plain wrong assertions - that I hardly know where to begin. As far as musicians go, sometimes members are retired professionals. Sometimes (wind/brass) they are aspiring youngsters learning the repertoire with the aim of a professional career. The community orchestra I play in just lost its principal trumpet to one of the country's professional symphony orchestras. He's already done Mahler 5 - he did it with us. A good half the players in my orchestra are in fact teachers of their instrument. They have a music degree, they have qualifications. To say


> The people who play in amateur orchestras would not get jobs as professional musicians because they don't meet the skill requirements needed, and they mostly have no experience or knowledge of what is actually required to play orchestral music.


 is simply wrong.

As for


> the ticket price should be very low, but often is more expensive than a concert by a well known professional orchestra


; this must be a specific instance you're quoting. It's just wrong for almost all amateur orchestras. We charge roughly a third the price of the Sydney Symphony's tickets. And parking is free at our shows, as opposed to the $25+ you drop for a night at the Sydney Opera House.

Most amateur orchestras are community-based - they have a much narrower geographic focus than a big city professional orchestra. And that's without even discussing regional orchestras which might provide the only live orchestral music in a town for 50 weeks of the year.

Sorry, I think the original post is just wrong.
GG


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## Lunasong (Mar 15, 2011)

I am a patron of a community orchestra comprised of amateurs and I support them through a loyalty card donor program because I wish I could be doing what they are doing, and I enjoy the concerts. I do know one of the players, but she is not a family member.
The tickets are 1/2 the cost of our professional orchestra's cheap seats and I don't need to pay for parking. Plus, they serve homemade cookies at interval  They only perform 4x a year, but the programs are as challenging as any of the professional orchestra's.


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## Jaws (Jun 4, 2011)

GraemeG said:


> The original post is so wrong on so many levels - full of generalisations and plain wrong assertions - that I hardly know where to begin. As far as musicians go, sometimes members are retired professionals. Sometimes (wind/brass) they are aspiring youngsters learning the repertoire with the aim of a professional career. The community orchestra I play in just lost its principal trumpet to one of the country's professional symphony orchestras. He's already done Mahler 5 - he did it with us. A good half the players in my orchestra are in fact teachers of their instrument. They have a music degree, they have qualifications. To say is simply wrong.
> 
> As for ; this must be a specific instance you're quoting. It's just wrong for almost all amateur orchestras. We charge roughly a third the price of the Sydney Symphony's tickets. And parking is free at our shows, as opposed to the $25+ you drop for a night at the Sydney Opera House.
> 
> ...


Sorry about the ramble. I probably wasn't very clear.
I live in the UK, there are no community orchestras here where anyone would leave and get a job in a professional orchestra, non of them offer that level of playing standard.

I would love to know how in Sidney you can achieve a community orchestra with such high playing standards that you can leave and join a pro orchestra?

Over the years I have discussed amateur music in the UK with professional musician friends and we have come to the conclusion that many UK community orchestra players don't do any practice between rehearsals, many of them never go to hear professional orchestras and they NEVER attend the concerts of other amateur orchestras unless they are playing in them. In fact they don't go to listen to concerts at all.

It seems in fact that they don't actually like either playing their instrument (no individual practice to improve) or classical music, (don't attend concerts to listen.) Their personal playing standards stay at roughly the standard that they were when they left school.

However what they do like doing is playing in concerts. This is what I don't understand. I can't work out why someone who doesn't like practicing, and doesn't like orchestral music, wants to play in concerts. As you can now probably understand these concerts are not of the standard that anyone who did like classical music would want to attend. I used when younger to play in community orchestras and I always found the rehearsals really interesting, because that was when you learned about the music. I was never interested in playing in the concerts. Now I won't play in amateur music concerts because of how I feel about the audience being asked to pay to hear something that could be a lot better if the members of the orchestra were actually interested in music.

I can't decide why these people play in orchestras at all. One friend has suggested that maybe it is because it gives them something to talk about at dinner parties? An ego trip? Or maybe they just like something about doing the actions on their instrument in the orchestra? Or maybe it is because it is social? I am quite in favour of people joining orchestral groups for any of these reasons, as long as they don't ask people to listen to them, and never ask people to pay to listen to them.

There is at least one orchestra here in the UK that does concerts but doesn't charge for admission, and does a collection at the end for charity. They will do a concert with no audience if no one turns up or for a very small audience. They dress in something smart but don't have a concert uniform. Some people don't appear to want to play in this orchestra because they don't dress up for concerts! So it is quite clear that one of the reasons for doing concerts is so orchestra members can dress up. I don't mind people dressing up but I do mind if they charge other people so that they can do it.

So this is what I have found out about the majority of community orchestra players in the UK.

1 Most of them don't do any personal practice.

2 They think that grade 8 is the highest standard that anyone can ever reach and once you have got there you are next to professional standard.

3 They never go to listen to concerts.

4 They have often never heard the pieces that they are playing in the orchestra from anywhere apart from inside an orchestra. This means that they don't understand how their part fits into the work as a whole. One result of this was a concert where none of the audience could hear a soloist because the woodwind section didn't understand that their parts were less important than the solo part. This orchestra is conducted by a professional conductor.

5 They like to dress up.

6 They think that their orchestra sounds like a professional orchestra, but many of them have never, or rarely heard a professional orchestra.

7 They don't have lessons because they don't like practicing and in any case they think that as they have passed grade 8 there is nothing more to learn.

8 The tickets for concerts are often more expensive than the cheapest tickets for a professional concert. One community orchestra player suggested that the cheapest tickets at a professional concert might have a restricted view and inadvertently gave away the fact that they themselves had never been to listen to a community orchestra concert which are usually held in churches where all the audience apart from the front two rows have a restricted view.

9 Many of them believe that playing a piece of music only involves getting the notes right and once you have done that there is nothing more to it.

Is there anything that can be done in terms of education to challenge these perceptions of concerts?

Is there a way of educating community musicians in the UK about the importance and enjoyment of hearing how the professionals do it and increasing their attendance of professional concerts to listen?

I know that many of the members of the community orchestras played in youth orchestras and school orchestras and gave concerts that their parents and family members went to listen to. Is it possible that they are still thinking of concerts along these lines and so are immature musicians?


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

You have been beating this dead horse for months, at least (ref another board); the carcass must be completely flayed. Well, maybe you'll get more sympathy here, where all of the musicians are pros.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Hilltroll72 said:


> You have been beating this dead horse for months, at least (ref another board); the carcass must be completely flayed. Well, maybe you'll get more sympathy here, *where all of the musicians are pros.*


They are? I thought most of the musicians here were students. 

(Or is that the joke?)


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

One of the interesting complications with this forum is that we have individuals from all over the world who participate in the discussions. Observations concerning that state of community orchestra in the UK may be invalid in the US and _vice versa_.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

What you have described is a weird state of affairs that I have never encountered, and frankly can't imagine over here. I don't know what to say.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Kopachris said:


> They are? I thought most of the musicians here were students.
> 
> (Or is that the joke?)


Oops; maybe it's geezer humor.


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## Jaws (Jun 4, 2011)

GGluek said:


> What you have described is a weird state of affairs that I have never encountered, and frankly can't imagine over here. I don't know what to say.


It is interesting for me to hear about US community orchestras because it seems that what you have in the US is not what we have here in the UK.

You probably think that it is really weird that here in the UK we have community orchestras where the majority of members never get their instruments out of the cases between rehearsals and never go to listen to professional orchestras.

One of the problems that this causes is that ex music students and recently retired professional players don't wish to join community orchestras.

I just wonder if it is usual for US community orchestras to audition their members every year to get rid of members who don't practice?

Here in the UK it is quite possible to attend a community orchestra concert where the members can't play the notes in their parts. There is one near where I live which thinks that it is a high standard where the last concert I went to they played something that I know well and it was almost unrecognisable. If they are a high standard for community groups can you just imagine what the concerts given by non high standard ones are like?

You could never mistake a UK community orchestra for a professional orchestra. Most of them sound like good school orchestras.

Could someone please describe what it is like to be a member of a community orchestra in the US? Do the orchestra members go to hear other community orchestras concerts? Do the members go to hear professional orchestra concerts? Do the conductors educate as well as conduct or do they do what mostly happen here, just beat time?

I would be very interested to hear about US community orchestras.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

_Could someone please describe what it is like to be a member of a community orchestra in the US? Do the orchestra members go to hear other community orchestras concerts? Do the members go to hear professional orchestra concerts? Do the conductors educate as well as conduct or do they do what mostly happen here, just beat time?_

I'm not sure how people would know all of this generally.

In post #5 above you make a lot of broad statements about British community orchestras going way beyond saying they aren't that good. how do you know, for example, #3 "They never go to listen to concerts"? Are you generalizing from a few examples known to you?


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Community orchestras over here consist primarily of people who like to play their instruments and enjoy both the challenge and the fellowship of playing togther. The levels of attainment vary widely, with the more "professional" musicians inhabiting the front desks, and the more amateur ones further down the row, but enjoying playing with and learning from more skilled instrumentalists. There is probably always "dead wood," but it tends to weed itself out over time if the enjoyment factor isn't there because we all have too much to do, and if you don't like what you're doing, what's the sense? I couldn't tell you whethere or not they go to other orchestra concerts -- probably depends on availability -- but there's certainly a lot of recorded music available, and most people who enjoy playing music, enjoy listening to it. How much a conductor "teaches" depends on the conductor. (Certainly some of them are just happy to get through the piece with the musicians), but in any event, just playing with an orchestra is a learning experience.


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## Jaws (Jun 4, 2011)

GreenMamba said:


> _Could someone please describe what it is like to be a member of a community orchestra in the US? Do the orchestra members go to hear other community orchestras concerts? Do the members go to hear professional orchestra concerts? Do the conductors educate as well as conduct or do they do what mostly happen here, just beat time?_
> 
> I'm not sure how people would know all of this generally.
> 
> In post #5 above you make a lot of broad statements about British community orchestras going way beyond saying they aren't that good. how do you know, for example, #3 "They never go to listen to concerts"? Are you generalizing from a few examples known to you?


It is quite simple actually to find out if they go to concerts, I asked people and the answer is that they don't. Plus I have been to many community orchestra concerts. I never meet members of other orchestras at any other concert unless they are playing in it as a guest. If I ask about community players attending concerts to listen they normally say they don't have time, because they have too many rehearsals.... One person admitted that they thought that it was more fun to play than to listen. I have been researching this subject for several years. Many orchestras have to practice notes in sections during rehearsals. This is because the playing members don't practice their parts between rehearsals. Many of them don't practice at all.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Jaws said:


> It is interesting for me to hear about US community orchestras because it seems that what you have in the US is not what we have here in the UK.
> 
> You probably think that it is really weird that here in the UK we have community orchestras where the majority of members never get their instruments out of the cases between rehearsals and never go to listen to professional orchestras.
> 
> ...


I would love to help you out, being a musician myself.

I have not been a member of a community orchestra, however, I've had one accompany me in a solo before. I can give the description of what it was like to work with them. I'm speaking of my own hometown's orchestra.

The conductor is a professional (i.e. has a degree) but he's not paid much. The members are not professionals, but they definitely are players. One of the flutists was a judge for an adjudication I did many years ago (I'm a flutist myself), although she didn't accompany me for that piece. Another flutist who was a substitute was in my private teacher's studio, and I knew her sorta personally that way (she's become a performance major or at least kept it well up). A number of people in that group were middle-aged, but some were young, even my age. One cellist there, I was with him at All-State Orchestra that very year when I did this solo. Another bass player was at my brother's university, getting his performance degree. The orchestra gets its players through auditions, which it announces on the radio and probably other places. They have a website giving their whole program, and special events. They do concerts to attract kids, besides performing major classics. Sure, people who go to those concerts would be friends and family of the members, but I know for sure that the night I performed my solo, many of those people who gave me a standing ovation were complete strangers to _me_, and just people of the community. They weren't the best players, but I was very happy, despite the french horns messing up at the end. :lol:

So, what have I implied here?
1. Members _are _talented and they enjoy/care about what they do
2. Young members use it as a stepping stone to gain experience and go on to study music
3. Regardless of the competing groups around, there_ is _an audience, which likely comes because it is convenient, trustworthy, and friendly atmosphere
4. _Why not play music?_

I think if you love music and playing it, don't stop with grade school. Continue it into college, and beyond. That's what community groups are about. And if one simply plays without sharing it with anyone, what is the point of it? I find playing only for oneself to be one of the emptiest things in the world, and good playing needs motivation. _Music is meant to be shared._


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## Jaws (Jun 4, 2011)

GGluek said:


> Community orchestras over here consist primarily of people who like to play their instruments and enjoy both the challenge and the fellowship of playing togther. The levels of attainment vary widely, with the more "professional" musicians inhabiting the front desks, and the more amateur ones further down the row, but enjoying playing with and learning from more skilled instrumentalists. There is probably always "dead wood," but it tends to weed itself out over time if the enjoyment factor isn't there because we all have too much to do, and if you don't like what you're doing, what's the sense? I couldn't tell you whethere or not they go to other orchestra concerts -- probably depends on availability -- but there's certainly a lot of recorded music available, and most people who enjoy playing music, enjoy listening to it. How much a conductor "teaches" depends on the conductor. (Certainly some of them are just happy to get through the piece with the musicians), but in any event, just playing with an orchestra is a learning experience.


Thank you so much for this post. It is very interesting. It is beginning to appear that the culture of playing in community orchestras is different in the US. Here in the UK it seems that the challenge and fellowship of playing together is less important than "doing playing" and playing in concerts. By "doing playing" I mean someone who sits in an orchestra and plays the notes for their part, but without much sense of the orchestra as a whole or the concept of working as a team.

I was beginning to suspect that the community orchestra musicians in the US enjoyed all aspects of music not just the doing of it. So you have now confirmed this. I have no answer to why people play in orchestras here when they don't like practicing their instruments or the music for their orchestra. I also don't know why they don't go to concerts.

I am hoping that someone might eventually be able to give a bit of insight into why people who are not interested in music or practice play in orchestras here in the UK. I find it fascinating that someone would spend time doing something that doesn't interest them. I am also hoping that someone will tell me what it is about "doing playing" in an orchestra that these people find so attractive, and whether they would still turn up to rehearsals if the orchestra that they play in stopped doing concerts.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

GGluek said:


> Community orchestras over here consist primarily of people who like to play their instruments and enjoy both the challenge and the fellowship of playing togther. The levels of attainment vary widely, with the more "professional" musicians inhabiting the front desks, and the more amateur ones further down the row, but enjoying playing with and learning from more skilled instrumentalists. There is probably always "dead wood," but it tends to weed itself out over time if the enjoyment factor isn't there because we all have too much to do, and if you don't like what you're doing, what's the sense? I couldn't tell you whethere or not they go to other orchestra concerts -- probably depends on availability -- but there's certainly a lot of recorded music available, and most people who enjoy playing music, enjoy listening to it. How much a conductor "teaches" depends on the conductor. (Certainly some of them are just happy to get through the piece with the musicians), but in any event, just playing with an orchestra is a learning experience.


I play with two groups and concur with GGluek statment.


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## Jaws (Jun 4, 2011)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I would love to help you out, being a musician myself.
> 
> I have not been a member of a community orchestra, however, I've had one accompany me in a solo before. I can give the description of what it was like to work with them. I'm speaking of my own hometown's orchestra.
> 
> ...


Thank you for this. What you have described here is not like anything in the UK.

I was very interested in the bit about the flutists. I can't think of any orchestras near here that would have players of anything that would be able to adjudicate at a competition or festival.
I have never heard of a community orchestra announcing auditions on the radio. Community orchestral music just isn't taken that seriously here in the UK. This of course may be because of the very low standards compared to what you have. However I think the big difference that is now becoming very apparent is that community orchestra players in the US care about what they do. Here in the UK many amateur community musicians don't seem to have that level of commitment either to their playing or to listening to music or to their orchestras, or to community orchestras in general.
It is very interesting.


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## Jaws (Jun 4, 2011)

GGluek said:


> Community orchestras over here consist primarily of people who like to play their instruments and enjoy both the challenge and the fellowship of playing togther. The levels of attainment vary widely, with the more "professional" musicians inhabiting the front desks, and the more amateur ones further down the row, but enjoying playing with and learning from more skilled instrumentalists. There is probably always "dead wood," but it tends to weed itself out over time if the enjoyment factor isn't there because we all have too much to do, and if you don't like what you're doing, what's the sense? I couldn't tell you whethere or not they go to other orchestra concerts -- probably depends on availability -- but there's certainly a lot of recorded music available, and most people who enjoy playing music, enjoy listening to it. How much a conductor "teaches" depends on the conductor. (Certainly some of them are just happy to get through the piece with the musicians), but in any event, just playing with an orchestra is a learning experience.


There is one orchestra near here that plays in lots of places in the South East and sometimes in Europe. ( The professional conductor is well connected.) That sounds like a good orchestra doesn't it? However if you weeded out the "dead wood" (those that don't practice and don't have lessons and are about the same standard as the average musician leaving high school,) you would lose almost the entire woodwind section all but about 2 brass players and a handful of string players. This is out of an orchestra of about 60 players.

The last concert by this orchestra that I went to featured a miming professional violin soloist at least this is what it looked and sounded like. In actual fact what happened was that the woodwind section (yes all that dead wood) was required to play really quiet chords to accompany the soloist but being unable to do this due to ( you guessed it, not enough practice probably for years) they just played the chords REALLY LOUD and completely covered up the solo. If anyone had gone to the concert especially to hear the violin solo they may not have got quite what they may have hoped for. Sadly there are at least 4 orchestras like this one in about a 5 mile radius of where I live. There is also one that is much worse. They all do concerts. The one with the "dead wood" woodwind section does 5 concerts a year.

I hope people on this forum are beginning to understand why I get so frustrated with community music here in the UK. What you have in the US sounds so much better. Thank you for telling me about it.


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